tain
Societies to summon a Convention in defiance of Parliament had led him
to order the seizure of their books and papers. Those of the
Corresponding and Constitutional Societies were brought, sealed up, to
the House of Commons on the morrow, whereupon Pitt moved for the
appointment of a secret committee to examine them. He himself, Dundas,
and nineteen other members soon drew up the Report. When presented on
16th May, it contained a statement of all the threatening symptoms of
the time, and so far ignored the legal efforts of those Societies as to
form a very alarming diagnosis.[330]

The fears of Ministers were further aroused by the contents of a letter
from the Rev. Jeremiah Joyce (tutor of Earl Stanhope's son) to Horne
Tooke, which the Post Office had seized. It announced the arrest of
citizen Hardy, and ended thus: "Query: is it possible to get ready by
Thursday?"[331] Some effort of the imagination was needed to figure the
Silenus of the literary world as a plotter against the lives of
Ministers. But they now decided to arrest him and the Reverend Jeremiah,
as well as Bonney, Richter, and Kyd, also members of the Constitutional
Society, besides Camage and one or two other democrats of Sheffield.
Davison, the would-be seller of pikes, had fled betimes.

These were the circumstances which induced Pitt to propose the
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act (16th May). The Report of the Secret
Committee having been read, he proceeded to exaggerate the import of the
more threatening parts of the evidence, and to convince the House that
these Societies, which had congratulated the French Convention, and
still aped its methods, were plotting to set up an authority openly
hostile to Parliament. With all the force of his oratory he pictured the
state of things that must ensue--"an enormous torrent of insurrection,
which would sweep away all the barriers of government, law and religion,
and leave our country a naked waste for usurped authority to range in,
uncontrolled and unresisted." Despite the warning of Fox that the remedy
now proposed was worse than the evil which it sought to avert; despite
the pleas of Grey and Sheridan against indecent haste in hurrying on
this arbitrary measure, it was forced through every stage in the Commons
at that single sitting; finally, at half-past three in the morning, the
numbers of the Whig protestors sank to 13, while the Ministerialists
still mustered 108 strong.[332]

This collapse o