722 Chapter XXX
oted, and burnt in effigy “two gentlemen who were obnoxious to them.”^21 Scotch
peasants, according to an informant of the Duke of Buccleuch, cared nothing for
Parliamentary reform, but would like to get ten acres apiece in a division of land,
and were all reading Thomas Paine. In London, also in November, hundreds of
persons trying to hold a mass meeting in Kensington Common were dispersed
by dragoons. English clubs took steps to send muskets and shoes to French
soldiers. Five of them—the London Corresponding Society, the Manchester
Constitution Society, the Manchester Reformation Society, the Norwich Revo-
lution Society, and the London Constitutional Whigs and Friends of the Peo-
ple—combined to convey a joint address to the French Convention, expressing
the hope that Great Britain would enter the war against “tyrants” on the side of
France, or at least remain neutral. An English- speaking group in Paris—English,
Scotch, Irish, and American—presented a similar declaration to the Convention
in November.^22
On December 11, 1792, just as the government was ordering up the militia,
mainly to preserve internal order, but in expectation also of war with France, an
assembly met at Edinburgh. Delegates attended from eighty societies in sixty- five
Scottish towns and villages, mostly in the zone of handicraft manufacture from
Glasgow to Dundee, an area in which there were now tens of thousands of club
members. Delegates addressed each other as “citizens,” and there was an alarming
connotation in the word “convention” itself, which had come into use in France
only three months before. It was not that the word signified what it did in France
or America; there was no thought of a convention as a body empowered to draft a
new and written constitution of government; the dangerous idea was that a collec-
tion of men brought together by clubs and societies, by claiming to represent the
people, should question the adequacy or legitimacy of the House of Commons.
The Convention, which met for three days, overruled but did not silence its more
militant members: it voted against officially receiving an address from the United
Irish; it professed its attachment, to which some took exception, to King and Lords
as well as Commons; and it declined even to petition Parliament, on the legal
ground that petitions would be received only from such constituted bodies as
counties and boroughs, or from individuals. It passed a resolution, however, for a
more equal representation in Parliament, it published its minutes, and it made ar-
rangements to meet again. On disbanding, the members took the French oath “to
live free or die.”^23
21 The quotation is from the Annual Register for 1792 , Chronicle, 44.
22 The addresses of English clubs to the French Convention sounded more revolutionary when
put into French, presented in an atmosphere of public excitement in the Convention and published in
the Moniteur, which was read all over Europe. The London Friends of the Revolution of 1688, claim-
ing to represent “plusieurs milliers de négociants, d’artisans, de manufacturiers et d’ouvriers,” declared
that they would regard war against France as “une déclaration de guerre contre nos propres libertés.”
The spokesman for the Society for Constitutional Information, in his speech preceding presentation
of the address, observed that with the French example “les révolutions vont devenir faciles,” and that
there might soon be “une Convention nationale d’Angleterre.” The spokesman for the English-
speaking residents of Paris called all existing governments prétendus. Moniteur, réimpression, XIV, 543,
592–94.
23 The proceedings are printed in full by Meikle, Scotland, 239–73.