He only expressed the natural awakening of the genuine Whig to the aspects of the case which he had hitherto ignored.The effect upon the middle-class Whigs is,however,more to my purpose.it may be illustrated by the history of John Horne Tooke(56)(17361812),who at this time represented what may be called the home-bred British radicalism.He was the son of a London tradesman,who had distinguished himself by establishing,and afterwards declining to enforce,certain legal rights against Frederick Prince of Wales.The prince recognised the tradesman's generosity by making his antagonist purveyor to his household.A debt of some thousand pounds was thus run up before the prince's death which was never discharged.Possibly the son's hostility to the royal family was edged by this circumstance.John Horne,forced to take orders in order to hold a living,soon showed himself to have been intended by nature for the law.He took up the cause of Wilkes in the early part of the reign;defended him energetically in later years;and in 1769helped to start the 'Society for supporting the Bill of Rights.'He then attacked Wilkes,who,as he maintained,misapplied for his own private use the funds subscribed for public purposes to this society;and set up a rival 'Constitutional Society.'in 1775,as spokesman of this body,he denounced the 'king's troops'for 'inhumanly murdering'their fellow-subjects at Lexington for the sole crime of 'preferring death to slavery.'He was imprisoned for the libel,and thus became a martyr to the cause.When the country associations were formed in 1780to protest against the abuses revealed by the war,Horne became a member of the 'Society for Constitutional Information,'of which Major Cartwright --afterwards the revered,but rather tiresome,patriarch of the Radicals --was called the 'father.'Horne Tooke (as he was now named),by these and other exhibitions of boundless pugnacity,became a leader among the middle-class Whigs,who found their main support among London citizens,such as Beckford,Troutbeck and Oliver;supported them in his later days;and after the American war,preferred Pitt,as an advocate of parliamentary reform,to Fox,the favourite of the aristocratic Whigs.He denounced the Fox coalition ministry,and in later years opposed Fox at Westminster.The 'Society for Constitutional Information',was still extant in the revolutionary period,and Tooke,a bluff,jovial companion,who had by this time got rid of his clerical character,often took the chair at the taverns where they met to talk sound politics over their port.The revolution infused new spirit into politics.In March 1791(57)Tooke's society passed a vote of thanks to Paine for the first part of his Rights of Man.Next year Thomas Hardy,a radical shoemaker,started a 'Corresponding Society.'Others sprang up throughout the country,especially in the manufacturing towns.(58)These societies took Paine for their oracle,and circulated his writings as their manifesto.They communicated occasionally with Horne Tooke's society,which more or less sympathised with them.The Whigs of the upper sphere started the 'Friends of the People'in April 1792,in order to direct the discontent into safer channels.Grey,Sheridan and Erskine were members;Fox sympathised but declined to join;Mackintosh was secretary;and Sir Philip Francis drew up the opening address,citing the authority of Pitt and Blackstone,and declaring that the society wished 'not to change but to restore.'(59)It remonstrated cautiously with the other societies,and only excited their distrust.Grey,as its representative,made a motion for parliamentary reform which was rejected (May 1793)by two hundred and eighty-two to forty-one.
Later motions in May 1797and April 1800showed that,for the present,parliamentary reform was out of the question.Meanwhile the English Jacobins got up a 'convention'which met at Edinburgh at the end of 1793.The very name was alarming:the leaders were tried and transported;the cruelty of the sentences and the severity of the judges,especially Braxfield,shocked such men as Parr and Jeffrey,and unsuccessful appeals for mercy were made in parliament.The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended in 1794:Horne Tooke and Hardy were both arrested and tried for high treason in November.An English jury fortunately showed itself less subservient than the Scottish;the judge was scrupulously fair:and both Hardy and Horne Tooke were acquitted.The societies,however,though they were encouraged for a time,were attacked by severe measures passed by Pitt in 1795.The 'Friends of the People'ceased to exist.The seizure of the committee of the Corresponding Societies in 1798put an end to their activity.A report presented to parliament in 1799(60)declares that the societies had gone to dangerous lengths:they had communicated with the French revolutionists and with the 'United Irishmen'(founded 1791);and societies of 'United Englishmen'and 'United Scotsmen'had had some concern in the mutinies of the fleet in 1797and in the Irish rebellion of 1798.
Place says,probably with truth,that the danger was much exaggerated:but in any case,an act for the suppression of the Corresponding Societies was passed in 1799,and put an end to the movement.
This summary is significant of the state of opinion,The genuine old-fashioned Whig dreaded revolution,and guarded himself carefully against any appearance of complicity.Jacobinism,on the other hand,was always an exotic.Such men as the leading Nonconformists Priestley and Price were familiar with the speculative movement on the continent,and sympathised with the enlightenment.
Young men of genius,like Wordsworth and Coleridge,imbibed the same doctrines more or less thoroughly,and took Godwin for their English representative.