Britain 731
Except in places like Manchester, where feeling ran high on both sides, the as-
sociations went out of existence as organized bodies in 1793. They had done much
to impose silence on merely moderate critics of the existing order, and to confine
radicalism to persons willing to take the consequences of open defiance. From
Birmingham the London Association heard that loyalists outnumbered the mal-
contents six to one; confidence grew, though a situation in which, in wartime, the
loyalty of a seventh of the population was uncertain would appear to be little to
boast of. When Lord Auckland returned from Holland he found, “with concern,”
in November 1793, “that all the lower classes are more or less affected by the exe-
crable doctrines of the day. But the main body of the kingdom is still sound.”^41 It
is not possible to say what a man in Auckland’s position meant by “lower.”
As the Associations against Republicans and Levellers became inactive, they
were succeeded by armed and uniformed companies of volunteers, organized by
men of local prominence after the war began. It must be remembered that En-
gland had next to no regular army; that what army there was, in 1793, was on the
Continent and in Ireland; and that the English, in any case, would not tolerate the
presence of regular troops in their neighborhood. The volunteer companies, osten-
sibly organized to repel French invasion, were mainly engaged in combatting in-
ternal disaffection. In some places, landowners recruited their tenants; in others,
factory owners of the new type, enjoying a closer contact with their workers than
was possible under the old system of dispersed rural industry, drew on reliable
employees to build volunteer units. The companies were of course officered by the
upper classes, and largely filled by the middle, but efforts were made to obtain a
representation of the lower classes also in their ranks. At their drills, parades, and
assemblies the right ideas were inculcated and publicized. The companies taught,
as Auckland had put it, the blessings that Britons had the good fortune to enjoy. A
lieutenant in Renfrewshire called them “a principal means of crushing that sedi-
tious and democratic spirit which has so much prevailed.” At Chiswick, near Lon-
don, it was found that the volunteers “encouraged and restored a due principle of
subordination amongst the different classes of the people.”^42
The impact of all this self- generated but well- organized activity could be illus-
trated from many specific cases. Thomas Walker, for example, was a textile manu-
facturer at Manchester, a man of inherited means, an Anglican of sufficient social
station to have had his portrait painted by Romney. He had even once been elected
boroughreeve, as the chief public officer was called at Manchester, which though
already a town of 75,000 had no municipal organization except for its old manorial
institutions. Walker developed an interest in radical politics and parliamentary re-
form. He was the friend and employer of James Watt, Jr., and the sponsor of
Thomas Cooper, who founded the democratic Manchester Herald. He was attacked
by the local branch of the Society against Republicans and Levellers, caught up in
the treason trials of 1794, victimized by false testimony, and, though acquitted,
obliged to spend thousands of pounds on his defense, and to suffer a besmirch-
41 Dropmore Papers, II, 455.
42 J. R. Western, “The Volunteer Movement as an Anti- Revolutionary Force, 1793–1801,” in En-
glish Historical Review, LX XI (1956).