Britain 723
As Britain and France went to war, in February 1793, the radical agitation be-
came more intense. The Society for Constitutional Information voted honorary
membership for several members of the French National Convention including
Jeanbon Saint- André, a former Protestant pastor. By 1793 some 200,000 copies of
the Rights of Man had been sold; the total a few years later was put at the unbeliev-
able figure of 1,500,000, which, however reduced by skepticism or caution, remains
well above the 30,000 estimated for Burke’s Reflections. In 1793 petitions for re-
form poured in upon Parliament. Those from Scotland outnumbered the ones
from England. The one from Edinburgh stretched “the whole length of the floor of
the house.” In England the movement was lively, with new societies forming in
various towns. A petition from Norwich had 3,700 signatures, one from London
and Westminster 6,000, one from Sheffield 8,000. The House of Commons re-
fused even to receive the Sheffield petition, finding it “disrespectful.” It was true
that the thought in these petitions was not so much to reform the House as to
transform it. What was wanted was not simply an extension of what existed, but
the replacement of one theory by another, with respect to what the House of
Commons and its relations to the country ought to be.
The Dundee Society, composed largely of weavers, since its petition had had no
effect, prepared and published an Address. It was written by George Mealmaker,
and submitted for improvement of language to Thomas Fyshe Palmer, an English-
man who was a graduate of Eton and Cambridge, and had gone to Scotland after
developing Unitarian ideas. He had played a prominent role in the militant minor-
ity at the Edinburgh Convention, becoming what Robert Dundas called “the most
determined rebel in Scotland.” He nevertheless advised the Dundee society against
publication of its manifesto, in which the war was denounced in very strong lan-
guage as the scheme of a wicked ministry to enslave the people.^24 Palmer was ar-
rested, tried, and sentenced to seven years in Australia for his part in the Dundee
affair. His case followed that of Thomas Muir, also prominent in the Edinburgh
convention, who was sentenced to fourteen years.
These Braxfield trials left an unpleasant impression on many persons not sym-
pathetic to the militant radicals, since Justice Braxfield had made a political com-
motion in his own courtroom and offered a variety of emphatic dicta: such as that
“in this country... the landed interest alone has a right to be represented,” and
that he “never was an admirer of the French,” but could “now only consider them
as monsters of human nature.”^25
Undeterred by the fate of Muir and Palmer, the Scotch clubs persisted in their
idea of a Convention. A second Convention met in April, and a third, this time a
British Convention, planned in conjunction with the London Corresponding So-
ciety, met at Edinburgh in November 1793. Hamilton Rowan came from Ireland,
and the London and Sheffield societies sent delegates from England. Among the
Scotch, fewer of the educated or substantial classes attended than at the first Con-
vention a year before. The British Convention was very vehement in its language.
When the Lord Advocate of Scotland accused it of desiring “not a reform but a
24 Extracts are printed by Maccoby, English Radicalism, 71.
25 Brown, Fr. Rev. in Eng. Hist., 97, quoting from State Trials, X XIII, 231.