and districts, and a list of members, approaching to half a million, in
correspondence or direct connexion. Government thought it high time now
to interfere; and, suspecting the machinations of the ring-leaders, they
adopted the usual policy under such circumstances, of employing spies
to become members, in order to betray the secrets with which they may
be entrusted. The morality of such a practice may be questioned; but
policy, and not morality, is too frequently the doctrine of even the
best-regulated states. The scheme, however, succeeded. In consequence
of the discoveries of these spies, Hardy, Adams, Martin, an attorney,
Loveit, a hair-dresser, the Rev. Jeremiah Joyce, preceptor to Lord
Mahon, John Thelwall, the political lecturer, John Home Tooke, the
philologist, Thomas Holcroft, the dramatist, Steward Kydd, a barrister,
with several others, were all arraigned at the Old Bailey. The papers of
Hardy and Adams had been seized, and an indictment was made out, which
contained no less than nine overt acts of high-treason, all resolving
themselves into the general charge, that the prisoners conspired to
summon delegates to a national convention, with a view to subvert the
government, to levy war against the existing authorities of the country,
and to depose the king. The evidence adduced, however, did not bear out
this strong indictment. Hardy, Home Tooke, and Thelwall were tried
and acquitted; and then the crown lawyers abandoned all the other
prosecutions, and those who had been indicted were liberated.

In the mean time some trials had taken place in Scotland which resulted
in a different manner to those which had occurred in the Old Bailey.
Thomas Muir, a Scotch barrister, and the Rev. Fysche Palmer, a Unitarian
preacher at Dundee, had been tried for sedition, convicted, and
sentenced to transportation. This excited considerable alarm among their
friends and associates in England, and attracted the attention of some
members of parliament. Early in the session Mr. Adams moved, in the
house of commons, for leave to bring in a bill for making some important
alterations in the criminal law of Scotland; and this being refused, he
gave notice that he would bring forward a motion for the relief of
Muir and Palmer, in another form. In the meantime Sheridan presented a
petition from Palmer, representing that he conceived the sentence
passed upon him by the high-court of justiciary, from which there was no
appeal, to be un