National
Convention should assemble in some convenient centre, a phrase which
seemed to point to their town, which, indeed, the Chartists chose for
that purpose in 1839.

In view of the fervent loyalty manifested on all sides, Ministers might
surely have trusted to the majority to control the restless minority.
Auckland expressed the general opinion when he said that the country in
the proportion of ten to one was sound and loyal.[326] As the majority
was armed, while the malcontents had but small stores of pikes, there
was little cause for fear, though in the minority were some desperate
men. In particular, Richard Davison, a prominent member of the Sheffield
Constitutional Society, recommended the clubs of London and Norwich to
buy consignments of pikes in order to resist the "newly-armed minions of
the bare-faced aristocracy of the present Administration"; and it
afterwards appeared that he could sell them at twenty pence each.[327]
This letter was sent off on 24th April, 1794, seventeen days after the
holding of a mass meeting on Castle Hill, Sheffield, at which the
chairman, Henry Yorke (_alias_ Redhead), declared that, when the sun of
Reason shone in its fullest meridian, the people would turn out the 558
gentlemen from Westminster. The meeting resolved that, as the people
ought to demand universal suffrage as a right, and not petition for it
as a favour, they would never again petition the House of Commons on
this subject.[328] Contemptuous epithets were now constantly hurled at
Parliament. On 2nd May, that genial toper, Horne Tooke, of Wimbledon,
declared at a dinner of the Constitutional Society in London that
Parliament was a scoundrel sink of corruption, and that the scoundrel
Opposition joined the scoundrel Government in order to destroy the
rights of Englishmen. In order to add weight to his epithets he called
the company to witness to his complete sobriety.[329]

Pitt and his colleagues now decided to strike at the leaders who were
planning a British Convention. Of these the most formidable was the
Secretary of the London Corresponding Society. Accordingly, early on
12th May, some Bow Street officers made their way into Hardy's shop, No.
9, Piccadilly, arrested him, seized his papers, ransacking the room
where Mrs. Hardy was in bed. The shock to her nerves was such as to
bring on premature child-birth with fatal results. On the same day a
royal message came to Parliament announcing that the efforts of cer