sanship of the time, which stooped to incredibly coarse
charges. But scarcely less strange was the insinuation of Lansdowne,
immediately after the affair, that Ministers had themselves planned it
in order to alarm the public and perpetuate their despotic rule. The
same insinuation found favour with Francis Place, a rabid tailor of
Holborn, and a prominent member of the London Corresponding Society, who
charged Pitt with imperilling the life of George III in order to keep
office. "It is a curious circumstance," he wrote, "that Pitt carried all
his obnoxious measures, silenced or kept down his opponents and raised
vast sums of money by means of the alarms which he and his coadjutors
had created. The war was commenced after an alarm had been created, and
it was kept up by the same means."[420] Fox and his followers often
uttered similar taunts.

The insults to the King were but the climax of an agitation which had
previously gone to strange lengths. On 27th October 1795 the London
Corresponding Society convened a monster meeting in the fields near
Copenhagen House, Islington, in order to protest against the war and to
press for annual Parliaments and universal suffrage. A crowd said to
number nearly 150,000 persons assembled under the chairmanship of John
Binns, and passed an "Address to the Nation," which concluded as
follows: "If ever the British nation should loudly demand strong and
decisive measures, we boldly answer, 'We have lives and are ready to
devote them either separately or collectively for the salvation of our
country.'" Outwardly the meeting was orderly, if that epithet can be
applied to a monster meeting which advocated civil war. But probably
less than one tenth of the assemblage heard the resolution. Equally
threatening was a hand-bill circulated in London on the practice of
"King-killing." Place says nothing about this, and ridicules the
"Address to the Nation" as a foolish production, which he had opposed no
less strongly than the convocation of the meeting. This was the usual
attitude of Place. He sought to figure as the apostle of reasonableness,
deprecating all unwise acts and frothy talk on the part of his
associates, but minimizing the follies of British democrats, which he
usually ascribed to the insidious advice of the emissaries of Pitt.

Let us enlarge our survey. From the Home Office Records it is clear that
dear food and uncertain work had aggravated the political discontent of
the years 179