Two Bills (1795) 

Two Bills – After the Copenhagen Fields meeting of the LCS on 26 October 1795 and the attack on the King’s coach on 29 October, the government moved to bring two bills before Parliament aimed at curtailing the activities of radical reformist groups – the Treasonable Practices Bill, introduced into the House of Lords by Grenville on 6 November 1795, and the Seditious Meetings Bill, moved by Pitt in the House of Commons on 10 November. The Two Bills became law on 18 December 1795. The former bill reinvigorated the notion that it was treason to even contemplate (or ‘imagine’, a word often used in derision of the bill) bodily harm or the death of the king, or engage in any speech or form of writing that would incite hatred of the king or parliament, the latter punishable in some cases with deportation. These bills gave local magistrates discretionary power over all public meetings of fifty persons or more convened for the purpose of petitioning the King or Parliament for parliamentary or ecclesiastical reform. As Albert Goodwin notes, ‘alarmism had done its work, and by placing large public assemblies under the close surveillance of local magistrates, the government could count on their unquestioning collaboration in the work of internal security.  In Parliament Pitt could rely on the unwavering support of large ministerial majorities and the enthusiastic backing of the Portland Whigs to force through these repressive policies, and in the country the propertied, professional and middle classes, rallied once more by the Reevite associations, united in self-defence against the renewed threats from reviving radicalism.’ The reaction by political reformers was predictable, and meetings of the reform groups were held in London and its suburbs and in localities throughout the provinces. According to the History of the Two Acts, 94 petitions against the Bills were sent to Parliament, with over 130,000 signatures, including 65 petitions in favor of the Bills, with 30,000 signatures. The Hackney meeting mentioned by Anne was held on Saturday, 21 November, in the Assembly Room of the Mermaid Tavern, with the Dukes of Norfolk and Bedford leading the people present into signing a petition opposing the Two Bills.  The Palace Yard meeting was held on 26 November with many of the same parliamentary leaders appearing in opposition to the bills. See Account of the Proceedings of a Meeting of the Inhabitants of Westminster, in Palace-Yard, Monday, Nov. 26, 1795, including the Substances of the Speeches of the Duke of Bedford, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Fox, &c (London: Citizen Lee, at the Tree of Liberty, 1795); History of the Two Acts (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1796); A. Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 389.