rt of the
address which expressed the conviction that a conspiracy had been
carried on against the constitution, but his amendment was rejected, and
the house concurred in the address as sent down by the lords.

AGITATION IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

Although government had scarcely so much cause of alarm at the movements
of political bodies as it exhibited, yet that there was some cause for
fear there can be no reasonable doubt. This is manifest from the state
trials which occurred at this period. One of the first of these trials
took place at the Lancaster spring assizes. Mr. Thomas Walker, of
Manchester, a strenuous advocate for parliamentary reform, at whose
house meetings for political purposes were occasionally held, was
indicted, with nine other persons, for conspiracy to overturn the
constitution by arms, and to assist the French in case of an invasion.
The principal evidence adduced was a person of the name of Dunn; but his
testimony was so contradictory that the prosecution was abandoned, and
Dunn was committed to prison to take his trial for perjury. Soon after
this a rumour was raised of a design to assassinate the king, and some
persons were arrested and committed for trial; but they were soon
after liberated, and the story fell into contempt under the popular
designation of the "Pop-gun Plot;" it being averred that the king's
death was to be encompassed by shooting him with an instrument
resembling a walking-stick. More important proceedings subsequently
took place in the Sessions-House at Clerkenwell. At this time the
London Corresponding Society counted more than 30,000 members in
its association, and it fully justified its title by entering into
correspondence with every seditious club in the kingdom. According to
a Jacobinical expression, it soon affiliated itself with the
Constitutional Society; their respective secretaries--Thomas Hardy, a
shoemaker, and Daniel Adams, an under-clerk--making known to the world
the results of their deliberations, signed and sanctioned by their names
and authorities. Hardy's club, that of the London Corresponding Society,
however, exercised a species of metropolitan jurisdiction over all. By
means of the handbills and pamphlets which this club circulated, and by
means of its lecturers and the meetings it concocted, a union of all
the clubs was formed; and this union finally arrived at a complete
organization, with a central board in London, a division into provinces