, notice
must be given by seven householders and sent to the magistrates. The
Bill also required the presence of a magistrate, and invested him with
power to stop any speech, disperse the meeting, and order the arrest of
the speaker. But this was not all. The authorities had been alarmed by
the popularity of Thelwall's racy discourses, resumed early in 1795,
which represented Government as the source of all the country's ills.
Whether his sprightly sallies were dangerous may be doubted; but Pitt,
with characteristic lack of humour, paid Thelwall the compliment of
ordaining that lecture-halls must be licensed by two magistrates; and a
magistrate might enter at any time. The Bill was passed for three years.

Equally drastic was the Treasonable Practices Bill. Declaring the
planning or levying war within the kingdom to be an act of substantive
treason, it imposed dire penalties on those who devised evil against the
King, who sought to coerce Parliament or help the invaders. Even those
who spoke or wrote against the constitution came under the penalties for
treason and might be transported for seven years. As Fox indignantly
exclaimed, if he criticized a system which allotted two members to Old
Sarum and none to Manchester, he might be sent to Botany Bay. The alarm
of Pitt at the state of affairs appears in a request which he and
Portland sent to the Duke of York, on 14th November, for reinforcements
of cavalry. They asked him to despatch three troops of the 1st Dragoon
Guards from Romford to Hackney, replacing the Pembroke Fencible Cavalry,
which was utterly useless; to order up two troops of the Cornish
Fencible Cavalry from Barnet to Hampstead and Highgate; to despatch the
11th Light Dragoons from Guildford to Ewell or Kingston, and the 1st
Fencibles from Reading to Uxbridge. These, along with the Lancashire
Militia at Lewisham and Greenwich, and the Guards in London, would
suffice for the crisis.[422]

Such were the conditions under which the debates on the two Bills
proceeded. They turned largely on the connection between the Islington
meeting and the outrage on the King. Canning stoutly affirmed that
connection, which Sheridan and Fox no less vehemently denied.
Wilberforce on this occasion supported the Government. Pitt showed
little zeal in defending his Bill, promising to safeguard the right of
public meeting when lawfully exercised. The debate in the Lords elicited
from the Bishop of Rochester the significant stat