elp in working up murderous conspiracies in order
that such conspiracies should be frightened out of existence, and that
it was quite right to protect and reward the emissaries who had
rendered such faithful service. For a time there was a widespread and
sincere belief that the Cato Street conspiracy was only one in a vast
network of conspiracies from which nothing but the severest measures of
repression could save England. The King himself in his royal message
to Parliament was careful to make use of the Cato Street conspiracy as
another and a crowning evidence of the necessity which existed for the
wholesale application of the criminal law in order to save the State
from the triumph of anarchy. A season of absolute panic set in and the
most trivial political disturbance arising in any part of the country
was magnified into another attempt of the emissaries of revolution to
upset the Throne, pull down the Church, and turn the State into the
republic of a rabble.

It is quite clear now to all readers of history that such attempts as
those planned by the Cato Street conspirators can only exist at a time
when stern and savage restrictions are set upon all efforts to obtain a
free public hearing for {20} the discussion of political and social
grievances. Where political wrongs can be arraigned in the open day,
there is no occasion for the work of the midnight conspirator. Already
in England public men were coming forward who were filled with the
noble and patriotic desire to give the philosophy of history some share
in the guidance of political life. Popular education had been totally
neglected in England, and, indeed, the too common impression among the
ruling classes was that the lower orders of the people could never be
kept in due obedience to their superiors if they were permitted to make
themselves unfit for their station by learning how to read and write.
Even the criminal laws themselves bore terrible testimony to the
prevailing ideas, by the fact that property was proclaimed as sacred a
possession as life itself.

[Sidenote: 1820--Offences that entailed the death penalty]

In the early days of George the Fourth's reign Sir James Mackintosh,
the famous historian, philosopher, and philanthropist, brought into the
House of Commons a measure for abolishing the punishment of death in
cases of the stealing of property to the value of five shillings, and
he succeeded in carrying his measure through Parliament. U