ONE:But this large infusion of Whiggery did not[439] render the Administration any the more liberal. It was determined to bring the politically accused, now out on bail, to trial. On the 6th of October true bills were found by the grand jury of Middlesex against Thomas Hardy, the secretary of the Corresponding Society, John Horne Tooke, John Augustus Bonney, Stewart Kyd, the Rev. Jeremiah Joyce, Thomas Wardle, Thomas Holcroft, John Richter, Matthew Moore, John Thelwall, Richard Hodgson, and John Baxter, for high treason. Hardy was put upon his trial first at the Old Bailey, October 29th, before Chief Justice Eyre, a judge of noted severity, Chief Baron Macdonald, Baron Hotham, Mr. Justice Buller, and Mr. Justice Grose, with other judges. Sir John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, as Attorney-General, opened the case against him in a speech of nine hours. In this he laboured to represent the Corresponding Society, and Hardy as its secretary, as guilty of a treasonable intercourse with the French revolutionists, and read numbers of documents expressing great admiration of the French institutions. But these were merely the documents which had long and openly been published by the Society, and were well known through insertion in the newspapers. There was nothing clandestine about them, nothing suggestive of a concealed and dangerous conspiracy. Their invariable burthen was the thorough reform of Parliament, and the utter disfranchisement of the rotten boroughs, by which the whole representation of the country was transferred to the aristocracy. Next a strong attempt was made to connect the secretary of the Society with the men lately condemned in Scotland, especially Margarot, with whom, as all undoubtedly engaged in the same object of Reform, Hardy, as secretary, had considerable correspondence. The whole failed to impress an English jury, and Hardy was acquitted after a trial of eight days.
ONE:Bolingbroke, now restored to his estates, though the attainder still deprived him of his seat in the House of Lords, endeavoured to create a new species of opposition in Parliament. He retained his influence with the Duchess of Kendal, and cultivated that of the ultra-Tories. Still more, he soon discovered that William Pulteney, the most eloquent man in the House, had grown disgusted with Walpole, who could never bear any man of pre-eminent ability near the throne except himself. Pulteney had been one of the steadiest friends of the late queen's Government, and of the Protestant succession. Under George he had been made Secretary at War. He had adhered to Walpole when he was sent to the Tower for corruption, and in the great schism of 1717. Yet Walpole had carefully excluded him from any high post in the Cabinet, and had endeavoured to veil his jealousy of him by offering to procure him a peerage, by which he would have removed him from the active sphere of the House of Commons. Pulteney saw the object, and rejected the specious favour. Instead of conferring on Pulteney some[53] office worthy of his talents, Walpole then put him into that of Cofferer of the Household. In the state of indignation which this paltry appointment raised in him Bolingbroke soon induced Pulteney to put himself at the head of a large body of Oppositionists, under the title of "Patriots." In this character he made some smart attacks on Walpole and his heavy drafts on the Civil List for his friends, for which he was dismissed, and joined Bolingbroke in a bold attempt to write down the Minister. Between them the celebrated paper The Craftsman was planned and established, and they became the bitterest and most persevering assailants of Walpole.And he understood that the shadow must rise always between them. He had never expected it to be otherwise. It was bound to be so, and he bowed his head in unquestioning acceptance.
ONE:
