TWO:That the spirit of the Bostonians had ripened into actual rebellion was unequivocally shown in the course of the year 1773. The Gaspee Government schooner, commanded by Lieutenant Dudingston, had been singularly active in putting down smuggling about Rhode Island. The Rhode Island packet coming in one evening from Newport to Providence, instigated by the general anger against the Gaspeefor the Rhode Islanders were great smugglersrefused to pay the usual compliment of lowering the flag to the schooner. Dudingston fired a shot across her bows, and, on her paying no regard to that, gave chase. The packet, however, ran close in shore, and the Gaspee following too eagerly, ran aground. It was on a sandy bottom, and the return of the tide would have lifted her off undamaged; but the smuggling population of Providence put off to her in the night, whilst she lay in a position so as to be incapable of using her guns, surprised, boarded, and set fire to her, carrying the lieutenant and the crew triumphantly on shore. Government offered a reward of five hundred pounds for the discovery of the perpetrators of this daring outrage; but though it was well known who the perpetrators were, no one would give any information. On the contrary, the most violent threats were uttered against any one who should do so.Sheridan introduced the subject on the 18th of April, and Fox ably supported him; but the motion was negatived. But this defeat only appeared to stimulate the reformers to higher exertions. On the 28th of April a new Reform society, entitled the Society of the Friends of the People, was formally inaugurated by the issue of an address, which was signed by no less than twenty-eight members of the House of Commons, and a considerable number of Lords, amongst them the Lords Lauderdale, John Russell, Stanhope, and Fitzgerald. Their title was unfortunate, for, though they were united only for Parliamentary reform, this cognomen was so much in the French style as to create suspicion and alarm. Many of the members were known to be admirers of the French Revolution, and about the same time another and decidedly French-admiring society was started, calling itself the Corresponding Society, and prosecuting a zealous intercourse with the Girondists and Jacobins. The admiration of French political principles rendered the conservative portion of the population quite determined to resist all innovations; and as this Society of the Friends of the People was regarded as a direct imitation of the Jacobin Club, it was violently opposed and stigmatised. On the 30th of April Mr. Grey, as representative of this Society, rose to announce that in the next Session he meant to introduce a regular measure for the reform of Parliament; that it was necessary, he said, had long been asserted by the two leading men of the HousePitt and Fox. Pitt rose on this, and declared himself still the friend of Reform; but he contended that this was not the time to attempt it. He had only, he said, to point to[392] the state of things in France, and to the effervescence which those principles of anarchy had produced in Britain, to show the necessity of remaining quiet for the present; neither did he believe that the mass of the English people would support any change in our Constitution. Fox upbraided Pitt with the abandonment of his former sentiments, and contended that we had only to look at the money spent lately in the armament against Russia, money thus spent without any consent of the people, to perceive the necessity of reform in our representation. He referred to Pitt's remarks on revolutionary books and pamphlets recently published, and declared that he had read very few of them. He had only read one of the two books of Thomas Paine, the "Rights of Man," and did not like it. Burke replied to him, and drew a most dismal picture of the condition of France under her Revolutionists. He said that the French Assembly was composed of seven hundred persons, of whom four hundred were lawyers, and three hundred of no description; that he could not name a dozen out of the whole, he believed, with one hundred pounds a-year; and he asked whether we should like a Parliament in Great Britain resembling it. In this debate, the further dissolution of the Whig party became obvious when Windham and others took the side of Burke.
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