Read Online Enemies of the State by M. J. Trow - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: M. J. Trow
Tags: TRUE CRIME / General
Ads: Link
both church and state:
Our Lord who art in the Treasury, whatsoever be thy name, thy power be prolongued, thy will be done throughout the Empire . . . Turn us not out of our places; but keep us in the House of Commons, the Land of Pensions and Plenty; and deliver us from the People. Amen 2
Under Justice Abbott (who would preside over the Cato Street trials) Hone was acquitted. Under Lord Ellenborough (who had tried Despard) it happened again, despite the most appallingly illegal interruptions from the judge and a summing up of disgraceful partiality. This was the last time such a prosecution was brought and it was Ellenboroughâs last case. Men said he never recovered from being laughed at. There were 115 prosecutions brought in the two years before Cato Street, but after that, things quietened down. The reason is best summed up by the poet John Keats in a letter to his brother in September 1819:
He [the bookseller and printer Richard Carlile] has been selling devotional pamphlets, republished Tom Paine and many other works held in superstitious horror. After all they [the authorities] are afraid to prosecute. They are afraid of his defence; it would be published inall the papers all over the empire. They shudder at this. The trials would light a flame they could not extinguish. 3
Even so, men like Cobbett, Carlile, Hone and the rest did serve time in prison, especially during the suspension of habeas corpus when no such trials took place. Joseph Swann, a Macclesfield hat salesman and newsvendor was gaoled for a total of four years and six months for selling seditious literature in 1819:
Off with your fetters; spurn the slavish yoke;
Now, now, or never, can your chain be broke;
Swift then, rise and give the fatal stroke. 4
This was inflammatory material and for every man who read it â or had it read to him â and muttered into his cups in a tavern, there were others (few, maybe â but that was the question) who were prepared to take it seriously and do something.
What emerged from the trial of Despard â and would emerge again in the Cato Street affair â was the number of radical centres, almost always public houses, where seditious meetings took place. In London, which would, of course, be the recruiting ground for Cato Street, the Two Bells, the Flying Horse, the Ham and Windmill, the Bleeding Heart, the Coach and Horses, the Brown Bear and the Black Horse were all places where like-minded gentlemen could hire a back or upstairs room for whatever purposes they wished. Few if any questions were asked and such pubs were perfect for the cross-pollination of grievances. Here the disaffected Irish could nudge elbows with hard-bitten soldiery, out of work canal ânavviesâ and anybody else increasingly unhappy with their lot.
The acceptable face of working-class reform meetings were the Hampden Clubs formed in 1812 by the âgood, grey Majorâ, John Cartwright. The clubs themselves were named after John Hampden, Oliver Cromwellâs cousin who had defied the arbitrary government of Charles I by refusing to pay tax called Ship Money in 1637. Cartwright was originally a naval officer with estates in Lincolnshire and his title derived from his post in the countyâs militia. A sane and sensible critic, he sided morally with the Americans in the War of Independence and wrote the definitive democratic book Take Your Choice in the year that Thomas Jefferson produced his Declaration of Independence. It advocated parliamentary reform, universalmale suffrage, equal electoral districts, annual parliaments and a secret ballot â almost everything in fact which the Chartist movement (1836â c .1850) stated as their aims.
Seen as too much of an extremist, Cartwright failed to get into parliament three times and in 1805 came to London to contact other radicals at both ends of the social spectrum â Francis Burdett, the baronet, and Francis Place, the tailor.
From 1812 much of
Our Lord who art in the Treasury, whatsoever be thy name, thy power be prolongued, thy will be done throughout the Empire . . . Turn us not out of our places; but keep us in the House of Commons, the Land of Pensions and Plenty; and deliver us from the People. Amen 2
Under Justice Abbott (who would preside over the Cato Street trials) Hone was acquitted. Under Lord Ellenborough (who had tried Despard) it happened again, despite the most appallingly illegal interruptions from the judge and a summing up of disgraceful partiality. This was the last time such a prosecution was brought and it was Ellenboroughâs last case. Men said he never recovered from being laughed at. There were 115 prosecutions brought in the two years before Cato Street, but after that, things quietened down. The reason is best summed up by the poet John Keats in a letter to his brother in September 1819:
He [the bookseller and printer Richard Carlile] has been selling devotional pamphlets, republished Tom Paine and many other works held in superstitious horror. After all they [the authorities] are afraid to prosecute. They are afraid of his defence; it would be published inall the papers all over the empire. They shudder at this. The trials would light a flame they could not extinguish. 3
Even so, men like Cobbett, Carlile, Hone and the rest did serve time in prison, especially during the suspension of habeas corpus when no such trials took place. Joseph Swann, a Macclesfield hat salesman and newsvendor was gaoled for a total of four years and six months for selling seditious literature in 1819:
Off with your fetters; spurn the slavish yoke;
Now, now, or never, can your chain be broke;
Swift then, rise and give the fatal stroke. 4
This was inflammatory material and for every man who read it â or had it read to him â and muttered into his cups in a tavern, there were others (few, maybe â but that was the question) who were prepared to take it seriously and do something.
What emerged from the trial of Despard â and would emerge again in the Cato Street affair â was the number of radical centres, almost always public houses, where seditious meetings took place. In London, which would, of course, be the recruiting ground for Cato Street, the Two Bells, the Flying Horse, the Ham and Windmill, the Bleeding Heart, the Coach and Horses, the Brown Bear and the Black Horse were all places where like-minded gentlemen could hire a back or upstairs room for whatever purposes they wished. Few if any questions were asked and such pubs were perfect for the cross-pollination of grievances. Here the disaffected Irish could nudge elbows with hard-bitten soldiery, out of work canal ânavviesâ and anybody else increasingly unhappy with their lot.
The acceptable face of working-class reform meetings were the Hampden Clubs formed in 1812 by the âgood, grey Majorâ, John Cartwright. The clubs themselves were named after John Hampden, Oliver Cromwellâs cousin who had defied the arbitrary government of Charles I by refusing to pay tax called Ship Money in 1637. Cartwright was originally a naval officer with estates in Lincolnshire and his title derived from his post in the countyâs militia. A sane and sensible critic, he sided morally with the Americans in the War of Independence and wrote the definitive democratic book Take Your Choice in the year that Thomas Jefferson produced his Declaration of Independence. It advocated parliamentary reform, universalmale suffrage, equal electoral districts, annual parliaments and a secret ballot â almost everything in fact which the Chartist movement (1836â c .1850) stated as their aims.
Seen as too much of an extremist, Cartwright failed to get into parliament three times and in 1805 came to London to contact other radicals at both ends of the social spectrum â Francis Burdett, the baronet, and Francis Place, the tailor.
From 1812 much of
Similar Books
