Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T09:59:38.809Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

John Reeves's prosecution for a seditious libel, 1795–6: a study in political cynicism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. V. Beedell
A. V. Beedell
Affiliation:
Institute of Historical Research
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Considered by many of his contemporaries in 1792–3 as the saviour of the British state, at his subsequent trial in 1796, Reeves was charged by the house of commons with seditious libel. The case offers an opportunity to scrutinize the current revisionist position which claims that loyalist values and ideologies, such as those promulgated by Reeves and his Association, were widely accepted and functioned as a natural bulwark against revolutionary principles and the destabilizing of the British state. But the publication of Reeves's ultra-tory tract Thoughts on the English government in 1795 not only provided the Foxite minority with a focus for its parliamentary attack on the 1795 Treason and Sedition bills, but, because of the overwhelming condemnation of the tract, forced Pitt publicly to repudiate Reeves and the entire ultra-tory position. Indeed, it is argued here that Reeves's church and king loyalist crusade of 1792–3 had been tolerated by Pitt's ministry merely as a convenient means of political intimidation and found little resonance in the political culture of the house of commons.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , December 1993 , pp. 799 - 824
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 An Act for the safety and preservation of his Majesty's person and government against treasonable and seditious practices and attempts (36 Geo. III, c.7.). Bill introduced into the house of lords by Lord Grenville, 6 Nov. 1795.

An Act for the more effectually preventing seditious meetings and assemblies (36 Geo. III, c.8.). Bill introduced into the house of commons by Pitt, 10 Nov. 1795.

2 Parliamentary History of England, XXXII (1795), 611Google Scholar, 23 Nov. 1795.

3 Thoughts on the English government. Addressed to the quiet good sense of the people of England, in a series of letters. Letter the first… (1795).

4 Represented in one of its facets by H. T. Dickinson and T. P. Schofield in their view of the popularity and power of conservative principles in the revolutionary period. See Dickinson, Liberty and property. Political ideology in the eighteenth century (London, 1977)Google Scholar, also his ‘Popular loyalism in Britain in the 1790s’, in Hellmuth, Eckhart (ed.), The transformation of political culture. England and Germany in the late eighteenth century (London, 1990)Google Scholar, and Schofield, T. P., ‘Conservative political thought in Britain in response to the French revolution’, Historical Journal, XXIX (1986), 601–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a broader expression of the revisionist position see Clark, J. C. D.English society 1688–1832. Ideology, social structure and political practice during the ancien regime (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar.

5 See letter from Reeves to the hon. Charlotte Lawless, 7 Aug. 1800, in which he makes an oblique reference to his being an Irishman. Personal recollections of the life and times, with extracts from the correspondence, of Valentine Lord Cloncurry (London, 1849), p. 43Google Scholar.

6 For the vital details see DNB; Austen-Leigh, R. A., The Eton College register 1753–1790 (Eton, 1921)Google Scholar; Foster, J.Alumni oxonienses (2nd series, 1715–1886, 4 vols., Oxford, 1888)Google Scholar.

7 In the Reeves debate. (Parl. hist. XXXII (1795), 628, 26 11)Google Scholar.

8 ‘Parliament of Great Britain dictates, whatever is so dictated, binds the Crown in all its dominions’. Legal considerations on the regency as regards Ireland (1789), p. 22.

9 See Derry, John W., The regency crisis and the whigs 1788–9 (Cambridge, 1963)Google Scholar.

10 In 1794 Daniel Stuart, secretary to the Friends of the People, reckoned he had ‘half a dozen places under government, [and] has been paid between three and four thousand pounds’. [Stuart, Daniel], Peace and reform against war and corruption… (1794), p. 10Google Scholar. This was a slight exaggeration; he probably only had five positions at the time. However, part of this assiduity was doubtless tied up with the psychological need for social approval. See Reeves to Grenville, 5 June 1806, in which he stated as his reason for desiring preferment ‘above all things, & which is the ruling desire with me, I shall thus be relieved from the mortification, which I may otherwise carry to my grave, of being rejected by the King, in the face of the Public’. British Library (B.L.), Add. MSS 58986, fo. 122.

11 Radzinowicz, Leon, A history of English criminal law and its administration from 1750 (5 vols., London, 1956), III, 109Google Scholar.

12 Jenkinson, Charles, in the H. of C., 14 12 1795, stated that he had been employed at Lord Hawkesbury's office for ten years. Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 758Google Scholar.

Lord Hawkesbury had become president of the board of trade only in August 1786.

13 Originally he was intended to receive 5 per cent of the takings. See Public Record Office (P.R.O.), PC 2/144, pp. 199, 235, 239 (20, 27 July 1796).

14 See Black, Eugene, The Association. British extraparliamentary political organization 1769–1793 (Cambridge, Mass. 1963)Google Scholar; Caulfield, J. A., ‘The Reeves Association: a study of loyalism in the 1790s’, Ph.D. thesis (Reading, 1988)Google Scholar; Dozier, Robert, For king, constitution and country. The English loyalists and the French Revolution (Lexington, 1983)Google Scholar; Ginter, Donald E., ‘The Loyalist Association movement of 1792–93 and British public opinion’, Historical Journal, IX (1966), 179–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mitchell, Austen, ‘The Association movement of 1792–3’, Historical Journal, IV (1961), 56–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the likelihood of involvement of at least certain sections of government see Ehrman, John, The Younger Pitt. The reluctant transition (London, 1983), pp. 231–2Google Scholar; Caulfield, , ‘The Reeves Association: a study of loyalism in the 1790s’, pp. 17–19Google Scholar.

15 Reeves is referred to by Sheridan as having been made a justice of the peace for Westminster ‘in the last commission’, in the debate on the committee report on the authorship of the pamphlet, on 14 Dec. 1795. (Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 745)Google Scholar. Burke also refers to him in 1795 as a magistrate of the City of Westminster (‘An Exordium for Mr Reeves’ in, Burke to Captain Emperor John Alexander Woodford [c. 26 Nov. 1795]. McDowell, R. B. (ed.), The correspondence of Edmund Burke (10 vols., Cambridge, 1969), VIII, 349)Google Scholar. Cloncurry claims he was a Bow Street magistrate (Personal recollections, p. 45). Horace Twiss opts for Middlesex. (The public and private life of Lord Chancellor Eldon (33 vols., 1844), I, 298)Google Scholar. Francis Plowden noted Reeves's appointment as high steward of the Manor and Liberty of the Savoy by Hawkesbury, Lord, chancellor of the duchy in A short history of the British empire during the year 1794 (London, 1795), p. 122Google Scholar. In this capacity, within the jurisdiction of the Manor and Liberty of the Savoy (an area of central London roughly in the vicinity of the present site of the Savoy Hotel), he was thus able to harass John Thelwall, charging him, unsuccessfully, with being a public nuisance. Somerville, Robert, Office-holders in the duchy and County Palatine of Lancaster from 1603 (1972), p. 212Google Scholar shows he was sworn in 27 Jan. 1794. Lord Hawkesbury as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster had powers to appoint magistrates and may have used this power to bring Reeves on to the bench for the Savoy at this time (see B.L., Add. MSS 38446–51 for duchy of Lancaster papers); presumably though under the aegis of either Middlesex or Westminster. There is no actual official record of his ever having been a magistrate in either Westminster or Middlesex but in 1803 he referred to himself as a magistrate for Middlesex (Reeves to the mayor of Bristol, 14 Sept. 1803. P.R.O., HO 5/8) and he was still a magistrate in 1806 (Reeves to Spencer 27 Dec. 1806, B.L. MSS, Althorp papers, provisionally catalogued, box G.262). He had, however, resigned from the Savoy stewardship in 1802 (Somerville, Office holders).

16 Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Burke to Woodford, c. 26 Nov. 1795, VIII, 349.

17 Turberville, A. S.The house of lords in the age of reform 1784–1837 (London, 1958), p. 83Google Scholar. Reeves's private career though was superficially unaffected. By 1798 he was probably also chief of the Standing Committee of the mint. And in 1800, after a persistent campaign extending over at least 6 years, he gained a share in the patent right to the position of king's printer – by all accounts a highly lucrative side-line (see Miles, W. A., A letter to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales; with a sketch of the prospect before him … (London, 1808), p. 156Google Scholar; see also below for the size of his estate at his death). Between 1803 and 1814 he was superintendant of the alien office, adding to his income a salary of £500 a year. (Reeves to Grenville, 5 June 1806, B.L., Add. MSS 58986, fo. 122.) Hazlitt, writing ten years later, could still identify him as the natural leader of the ‘Lives and fortune men’ (Examiner, 25 Aug. 1816, in The complete works of William Hazlitt, ed. Howe, P. P. (21 vols., London, 1930), XIX, 152Google Scholar). Yet, significantly, he was turned down for more prestigious positions, notably that of judge advocate, concerning which, he wrote to Grenville in 1806: ‘There has been strange dealings; and advantage has been taken of the poor King, to dupe him, as well as me – This between ourselves.’ (Reeves to Grenville, 9 June 1806, B.L., Add. MSS 58986, fo. 125.) But in any case, his career, following his trial, never really reached the heights which his capacities probably merited and he remained, when he was not struggling to defend himself from the rearguard malice of the opposition, for the rest of his life, in relative obscurity. In 1800, 1806 and 1808 there were attacks made on Reeves's career by Miles and Sheridan. The most serious was Sheridan's in 1806 when he spread a rumour that the prince of Wales had requested that Lord Grenville sack him from the alien office for having written a pamphlet (probably on the catholic petition of 1805) offending Mrs Fitzherbert. Reeves's letters to Grenville on the subject are close to apoplectic. The king himself became involved (B.L., Add. MSS 58986, fos. 106–18). See also the bemused correspondence between Grenville and Fox, HMC Report on the manuscripts of J. B. Fortescue Esq. preserved at Dropmore (London, 1912), VIII, 116Google Scholar. Like many men of incipiently middle-class background though, he resented what he called this ‘bastard dependence’ (Reeves to Windham, 2 Aug. 1794, B.L., Add. MSS 37874, fo. 43) and towards the end of his career as superintendent of the alien office in 1814, allowed himself the luxury of piquing his masters. His scrupulous fairness in this role apparently annoyed Addington, then home secretary, during whose ministry he had actually acquired the position. (See Polden, Patrick, ‘John Reeves as superintendent of aliens 1803–14’, Journal of Legal History, III (1982), 31–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.) As king's printer he won acclaim for his edition of the bible. His circle of friends was wide enough to include the earl of Clonmel and William Cobbett, who wrote of him: ‘politics aside, [he was] as good a man as ever lived…considerate, mild, humane; made by nature to be an English judge’. The autobiography of William Cobbett. The progress of a ploughboy to a seat in parliament, ed. Reitzel, William (London, 1933), p. 83Google Scholar. See also remarks on his ‘kind heart’, in Personal recollections of the life and times…of Valentine Lord Cloncurry, pp. 46–7. He never married. On his death, intestate in 1829, he left an estate of £187,268. 8. 0. (P.R.O., IR 26/230/298).

18 Three more ‘letters’ subsequently appeared in 1799 and 1800. Unrepentant, but more scholarly and less polemical, they did not provoke much controversy.

19 Plowden to Kenyon, 4 Aug. 1791. HMC, Fourteenth report, appendix, part IV. The manuscripts of Lord Kenyon (London, 1894), pp. 534–5Google Scholar.

20 Plowden, Francis, A short history of the British empire during the last twenty months; viz. from May 1792 to the close of the year 1793… (London, 1794), pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

21 The malecontent. A letter from an Associator to Francis Plowden, Esq. author of, ‘Jura Anglorum’, ‘A history of the last twenty months’, and ‘A friendly and constitutional address to the people of Great Britain’ (London, 1794), p. 6Google Scholar. I have assumed that this is the work cited by Watt, Robert, Bibliotheca Britannica (1824)Google Scholar, Allibone, S. Austin, Critical dictionary of English literature (1870)Google Scholar and DNB as Reeves's, although none includes the words ‘from an Associator’ in the title. Thus there is some confusion between it and another work (which I cannot trace), mentioned in the DNB article on Plowden, , A letter to Francis Plowden Esq. from an Associator (1794)Google Scholar. My own view is that they are one and the same.

22 Plowden, Francis, A short history of the British empire during the year 1794 (London, 1795)Google Scholar. Reeves had been provoked initially by what he perceived to be Plowden's contradiction of the conservative theories propounded in his Jura Anglorum: the rights of Englishmen (London, 1792)Google Scholar. In this new work he set sections from Jura Anglorum in parallel columns beside Burke as evidence of his fundamental divergence of opinion. Indeed, it would seem that Plowden's conservative ‘natural law’ ideology was a product of his Catholicism but his ‘natural rights’ ideology a product of his whiggism – a point rather overlooked by Dickinson, ‘Popular loyalism in Britain in the 1790s’, p. 506, as well as by Schofield, T. P., in his discussion of Plowden, whom he refers to as ‘One of the most comprehensive natural law writers’, in ‘Conservative political thought in Britain in response to the French Revolution’, pp. 614–17Google Scholar.

23 Possibly through Windham. See Ehrman, , The Younger Pitt, pp. 231–2Google Scholar for discussion of the Windham involvement with the 1792 Association movement. Also Reeves's correspondence with Windham (B.L., Add. MSS 37874, esp. fos. 33–9, 1 Aug. 1794).

Burke was obviously familiar with the contents of Reeves's pamphlet by 25 Nov. 1795 indicating that Reeves had sent him a copy. (Correspondence of Edmund Burke, VIII, 347, Burke to Windham, 25 Nov.)

24 Correspondence of Edmund Burke, VIII, 354.

25 Thoughts on the English government…Letter the first, pp. 12–13.

26 Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Burke to Windham, 25 Nov. 1795, VIII, 347.

27 Parl. hist., 23 11, XXXII (1795), 612–13Google Scholar.

28 See Wilson, Kathleen, ‘Inventing revolution: 1688 and eighteenth-century popular politics’, Journal of British Studies, XXVII (1989), 349–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Thoughts on the English government…Letter the first, p. 52.

30 Thoughts on the English government…Letter the first, pp. 57–8.

31 Thoughts on the English government…Letter the first, p. 16.

32 Reeves, , Malecontent, p. 36Google Scholar.

33 For the Sacheverell case, see Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Time (2nd edn, 6 vols., Oxford, 1833), V, 434–50Google Scholar, and for a less biased account, Stanhope, P. H., 5th Earl Stanhope, History of England comprising the reign of Queen Anne until the Treaty of Utrecht 1701–1713 (London, 1870), pp. 404–17Google Scholar. See also Holmes, Geoffrey, The trial of Doctor Sacheverell (London, 1973)Google Scholar.

34 An Appeal from the new to the old whigs in consequence of some later discussions in parliament, relative to the Reflections on the French Revolution (London, 1791), pp. 18–20Google Scholar.

35 A letter from Mr Burke to a member of the National Assembly; in answer to some objections to his book on French affairs (1791), pp. 15, 16, 48, 49.

36 Personal recollections of the life and Times…of Valentine Lord Cloncurry, p. 43.

37 The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England begun in the year 1641, by Edward [Hyde], , Earl of Clarendon, ed. Macray, W. Dunn (6 vols., Oxford, 1888)Google Scholar, passim, but esp. IV, paras. 231, 232 and v, para. 12.

38 The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, IV, para. 217.

39 Malecontent, pp. 125–6.

40 The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, V, para. 12.

41 Parl. hist., XXXII (1795), 258, 252Google Scholar.

42 See his more measured Thoughts on the English government…Letter the second (1799).

43 Reeves to Pitt, 25 Nov. 1795, P.R.O., PRO 30/8/170/2, fo. 268 (272).

44 See Ehrman, , The Younger Pitt, p. 233Google Scholar, for positive attitudes towards Reeves's Association movement of Grenville, Buckingham, Auckland and the archbishop of Canterbury.

45 Reeves to Windham, 1 Aug. 1794, B.L., Add. MSS 37874, fo. 34.

46 B.L., Add. MSS 37874, fo. 37.

47 B.L., Add. MSS 37874, fos. 37–8.

48 B.L., Add. MSS 37874, fos. 38–9. By this last remark, Reeves was presumably referring to the July conjunction of the Portland whigs with the Pitt ministry.

49 Reeves to Pitt, 7 Nov. 1795, P.R.O., PRO 30/8/170/2, fo. 255, This letter was marked ‘Ansd’ and Reeves's ‘Address’ appeared regularly thereafter.

50 Reeves to Pitt, 10 Nov. 1795, P.R.O., PRO 30/8/170/2, fo. 257.

51 Reeves to Pitt, 11 Nov. 1795, P.R.O., PRO 30/8/170/2, fo. 261. The word ‘poor’ here has been read by Ehrman, , The Younger Pitt (p. 458)Google Scholar, as ‘prior'. Both are plausible.

52 Reeves to Pitt, 18 Nov. 1795, ibid. fo. 265. Reeves at this time had apparently been harassing Lee, author of the infamously titled pamphlet King-killing no murder, whose shop ‘The Tree of Liberty’ was meant to be a hot-bed of insurrection and regicide.

53 Gifford, John, A history of the political life of the right honourable William Pitt; including some account of the times in which he lived (3 vols., London, 1809), II, 165Google Scholar.

54 Tomline, George, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt (2 vols., London, 1821), II, 559–60Google Scholar.

55 It is generally assumed that Reeves was amply rewarded by Pitt's government for his Association efforts of 1792. But on closer examination it would appear that the only direct reward (apart from Hawkesbury's making him high steward of the Savoy), was the king's printer's patent, which he finally acquired a share of in 1800, Pitt succumbing to pressure from Dudley Ryder and Dundas (Reeves to Charles Yorke, 29 June 1810, B.L., Add. MSS 45038, fo. 103). His alien office job of 1803 was procured for him by Charles Yorke as home secretary, only in Addington's ministry, ten years after the Association movement and initially only as a stop-gap (see Reeves to Earl Spencer (home secretary), 25 Jan. 1806, B.L. MSS, Althorp papers, provisionally catalogued box G.262); and as already noted in n. 17, he failed to secure other posts he aspired to.

56 For Miles's receipt of £500 a year secret service money from Pitt's government, earned mostly on the continent as an English agent, see The Correspondence of George, Prince of Wales 1770–1812, ed. Aspinall, A. (8 vols., 1971), IV, 115 n.Google Scholar; For his virulent attack on reform politics see his A letter to Lord Stanhope on his political conduct in reference to the French Revolution… (1794).

57 Miles to Pitt, 5 Nov. 1795, P.R.O., PRO 30/8/159, fos. 275–8.

58 Miles to Pitt, 11 Nov., P.R.O., PRO 30/8/159, fo. 279.

59 See DNB [Miles] for reference to this friendship. Also Reeves's remark, ‘it was he [Miles] also, who put into Sturt's head to take it up as he did, and begin the stir in the House of Commons’, Reeves to Faulkner [sic] 5 Feb. 1800, Correspondence of George, Prince of Wales, IV, 116. See also next note for Miles's role in the prosecution of Reeves.

60 Miles was questioned and his correspondence with Reeves over the pamphlet was presented as evidence to the committee Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 482–4Google Scholar, 1 Dec. Reeves later claimed that it had been Miles who had secured the evidence of the printer's workmen against him (Correspondence of George, Prince of Wales, IV, 116; Reeves to Faulkner [sic], 5 Feb. 1800).

61 See Miles, , A letter to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, pp. 126, 156–7Google Scholar.

62 Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 287Google Scholar.

63 Later a civilian detainee in France. He was the uncle of the Australian explorer Charles Sturt.

64 Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 288Google Scholar.

65 See Dozier, , For king, constitution and country, p. 170Google Scholar.

66 Fox to his nephew Henry Vassall Fox, Lord Holland, 15–17 Nov. 1795, Memorials and correspondence of Charles James Fox, ed. Russell, Lord John (4 vols., London, 1854), III, 123–6Google Scholar.

67 See, for example, Mathias, T. J., The pursuits of literature. A satirical poem in four dialogues… (16th edn, London, 1812), p. 277 nGoogle Scholar. ‘The example of a very learned and, in my opinion, of a very virtuous and honourable man, to whom the country is under much obligation, Mr Reeves, will deter any man from volunteer effusions in favour of any Minister….For my own part, when his pamphlet, “The Thoughts on the English Government” was published, I never felt more indignation than when I saw this gentleman ungenerously and shamefully abandoned, and given up by Mr Pitt in the House of Commons to the malice of his avowed enemies, and to a criminal prosecution’. Pitt's biographer John Gifford, a staunch supporter of Reeves, considered that Pitt's conduct ‘might be politic, but was not generous’. A history of the political life of William Pitt, II, 555.

68 Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 297Google Scholar.

69 The diary and correspondence of Charles Abbot, Lord Colchester, Speaker of the House of Commons 1802–1817, ed. by his son Charles, , Colchester, Lord (3 vols., London, 1861), I, 9Google Scholar.

70 Parl. Hist., XXXII (1795), 614, 23 11Google Scholar

71 Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 309, 23 11 1795Google Scholar.

72 Grey MSS, quoted in Thorne, R. G., History of parliament. The House of Commons 1790–1820 (5 vols., London, 1986), v, 37Google Scholar. Cf. Fox to his nephew Henry, , Holland, Lord, 15–1711 1795, Memorials and correspondence of Charles James Fox, III, 123–6Google Scholar.

73 Abbott, Charles expressly records that the pamphlet was ‘incidentally mentioned by Mr Sturt’, which suggests that at least there was no perception at the time of a pre-planned strategy. The diary and correspondence of Charles Abbot, I, 8Google Scholar.

74 Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 295Google Scholar, Sturt, 23 Nov.

75 Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 309, 23 12Google Scholar

76 In his argument against the Bill, Treason: ‘Law and government’, he said, ‘could be defined but he had good authority, from a pamphlet which he imagined was well known to the ministers, to say, that the word constitution could not’. Parl. hist., XXXII (1795), 251Google Scholar.

77 Burke, to Windham, [25 Nov.], Correspondence, VIII, 347Google Scholar.

78 He later clarified his position on this, declaring himself to be an avid supporter of the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement. He was, he said, a ‘settlement Whig, or if you will a settlement Tory’ as opposed to a ‘Revolution Whig’ – i.e. one who preferred the pulling down of government to the setting up of it. Thoughts on the English government…Letter the second, pp. 167–8.

79 Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 308Google Scholar. The charge against Sacheverell had read: ‘that a Book entituled, “The Communication of Sin; being a Sermon preached…August 15, 1709:” and a Book, intituled, “The Perils of False Brethren both in Church and State;…in a Sermon preached…5 November, 1709”, are malicious, scandalous and seditious libels; highly reflecting upon her majesty and government, the late happy Revolution, and the Protestant Succession as by law established, and both Houses of Parliament; tending to alienate the affections of her majesty's good subjects, and to create jealousies and divisions among them’. T. B., and Howell, T. J.A complete collection of state trials (33 vols., London, 1816–1826), XV, 1–475Google Scholar.

80 Parl. hist., XXXII (1795)Google Scholar, Lauderdale col. 251, Norfolk cols. 253–4, Nov. 10 debate on Treasonable Practices Bill.

81 Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 320Google Scholar.

82 Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 322Google Scholar.

83 Parl. Register, XLIII (1795), 323Google Scholar. See also the somewhat different account in Parl. hist., XXXII (1795), 386Google Scholar.

84 William Woodfall, Impartial Report of the Debates that Occur in the Two Houses of Parliament in the Course of the Sixth Session of the Seventeenth Parliament of Great Britain, I, 470. It is not reported in Parl. hist. Parl. Register gives a shorter version.

85 Parl. hist., XXXII (1795), 628Google Scholar.

86 The example of France, a warning to Britain, by Young, Arthur (1793), pp. 69–70, 75Google Scholar.

87 Parl. hist., XXXII (1795), 642–4, 26 NovGoogle Scholar.

88 Burke, to Woodford, [circa 26 Nov., 1795], Correspondence, VIII, 348Google Scholar.

89 See Dozier, , For king, constitution, and country, p. 170Google Scholar, and Clark, , English Society, p. 265Google Scholar.

90 Reeves to Pitt, 27 Dec. 1797, P.R.O., PRO 30/8/170/2, fo. 273.

91 The largest minority vote in all the divisions over the ‘Two Bills’ was 70–267 on Curwen's motion for a delay on the Sedition Bill's moving into the committee stage. See also Thorne, , History of parliament. The House of Commons 1790–1820, I, 129–41Google Scholar, ‘Introductory survey’, for an analysis of the strength of the Foxite minority.

92 Gifford, Political life of William Pitt, II, 555Google Scholar.

93 Seditious Meetings Bill, 3 Dec., 266–51; Treasonable Practices Bill, 10 Dec., 226–45.

94 Parl. hist., XXXII (1795), 680Google Scholar.

95 Howell, , State trials, XXVI, 590Google Scholar.

96 Howell, , State trials, XXVI, 591Google Scholar.

97 Malecontent, pp. 116–17. In essence that ‘One obstinate juryman, who has no conscience, or shame, may always command a verdict’.

98 [Beloe, William], The sexagenarian, or the recollections of a literary life (2 vols., London, 1817), II, 120Google Scholar. Beloe reckons he warned Reeves to have his defence remove the man from the jury, but that he either forgot or was so confident that he declined.

99 Howell, , State trials, XXVI, 553Google Scholar.

100 Reeves himself was probably the first to claim this: ‘a senseless prosecution of party’ he called it, conveniently ignoring the fact that only 2 voices in the entire house of commons voted in his defence (Thoughts on the English government…Letter the second, p. 190). Pitt's early biographer John Gifford takes much the same position and he was certainly not the last (Political life of William Pitt, II, 458–563). In 1843, the historian John Adolphus thought the occasion an excuse ‘to afford vent to some of the ill-will entertained against the author [Reeves]’ (The history of England from the accession to the decease of King George the Third (7 vols., London, 1843), VI, 382)Google Scholar. In 1844 Horace Twiss referred to it as an act of ‘retaliation’ (The public and private life of Lord Chancellor Eldon… (3 vols., London, 1844), I, 298–9)Google Scholar. Nor was Earl Stanhope in his 1861–2 work on Pitt any less adamant on the point (Stanhope, P. H., 5th Earl Stanhope, Life of the right honourable William Pitt (4 vols., London, 1861, 1862), II, 364)Google Scholar.

101 See Sack, J. J., ‘The memory of Burke and the memory of Pitt: English conservatism confronts its past, 1806–1829; Historical Journal, XXX (1987), 623–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 Ehrman, , The Younger Pitt, p. 458Google Scholar.

103 See Dozier, , For king, constitution and country, pp. 170–1Google Scholar.

104 Lambton to Grey, 11 Apr. 1796, Grey MSS, quoted in Thorne, , House of commons, V, 372Google Scholar.

105 A propos Napoleon – the collapse of democracy in France, and the establishment of the military dictatorship which replaced it, was probably the key anti-revolutionary element – at once discrediting the pro-French democrats whilst providing Napoleon as a classic bogeyman with which to unify the nation. This point is touched on in Feiling, Keith Grahame, The second lory party 1714–1832 (London, 1938), p. 205Google Scholar.

106 Harvey, , Britain in the early nineteenth century, p. 114Google Scholar.

107 See Fox to Henry, Lord Holland, 15–17 Nov. 1795, Memorials and correspondence of Charles James Fox, III, 123–6, esp. p. 123, where he declares that he was not very ‘sanguine’ about his chances of influencing the house of commons on the bills.

108 Thompson, E. P.The making of the English working class (London, 1963)Google Scholar. Challenged by Thomis, M. I. and Holt, P., Threats of revolution in Britain 1789–1848 (London, 1977), p. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harvey, A. D., Britain in the early nineteenth century (London, 1978), pp. 51–5, 79–83, 94Google Scholar; Schofield, ‘Conservative political thought in Britain in response to the French revolution’; H. T. Dickinson, ‘Popular loyalism in Britain in the 1790s’.

109 See Schofield and Dickinson in previous note. Also Christie, Ian R., ‘The intellectual repulse of revolution’, Stress and stability in late eighteenth century Britain. Reflections on the British avoidance of revolution (Oxford, 1984), pp. 157–82Google Scholar.

110 ‘Popular loyalism in Britain in the 1790s’, p. 507.

111 It is significant in this context, that Dickinson sees little connection between the reformers of the 1780s and 1790s and the passing of the Reform Act of 1832; perceiving the interim of 50 years as well as the limited provisions of the 1832 Act as representing their failure. See Dickinson, , Liberty and property, p. 270Google Scholar.

112 Michael Weinzierl in his inaccurate and rather ingenuous 1985 article on the Reeves controversy rather gives the game away when he remarks ‘It seems more remarkable than the predictable stance of Fox and Sheridan, that no one on the government side, except for William Windham, defended Reeves.’ ‘John Reeves and the controversy over the constitutional role of parliament in England during the French Revolution’, Parliaments, estates and representation, v (1985), 71–7, at p. 73. I am indebted to Dr P. Le Fevre for this reference.

113 Richard, Henry, Holland, Lord, Memoirs of the Whig party during my time, ed. by his son Edward, Henry, Holland, Lord (2 vols., London, 1852), I, 130Google Scholar.

114 His cousin, Lord Grenville recalled his laughing decision to plough up Roman ruins on his property and his general lack of respect for antiquity. Rogers, Samuel, Recollections (London, 1859), p. 189Google Scholar.

115 See Willis, R. E., ‘William Pitt's resignation in 1801. Re-examination and document’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XLIV (1971), 239–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially the appendix, Earl Camden's ‘Memorandum on Pitt's retirement’ [of 1801] in which Camden regrets to record Pitt's growing neglect of the king. My thanks to Dr A. D. Harvey for this reference. See also Stanhope, Life of the right honourable William Pitt for the period 1801–1804.

116 See Pitt to Auckland, 8 Nov. 1795, in which Pitt comments on Burke's letter to Auckland (30 Oct. 1795) disagreeing with Auckland's support for the idea of peace with France. Pitt remarked, ‘like other rhapsodies from the same pen,…there is much to admire and nothing to agree with’. Journal and correspondence of William Lord Auckland (4 vols., London, 1832), III, 320Google Scholar. Cf. Pares, Richard, King George III and the politicians (Oxford, 1953), p. 194Google Scholar: ‘the younger Pitt was George III's Prime Minister: but his political theory was at least as progressive as Fox's and his political economy much more so. Both of them began by thinking Burke's crusade for the old order a piece of romantic nonsense. But the panic of the 1790s brought about a different alignment.’ It would seem though, that Pitt's scepticism of Burke's vision was still intact in 1795.

117 Even J. C. D. Clark would reluctantly acknowledge this. See his elegy to the passing of the old philosophy. English society, pp. 408–9. Clark's brief treatment of the Reeves case (pp. 263–5) focuses upon Reeves solely as a regrettably ‘neglected’ ultra-conservative apologist and as a ‘vulnerable target’ of opposition spleen, indulged by Pitt's recherché whig traditionalism (p. 265).

118 Clark, , English society, p. 408Google Scholar.