The period 1792–4 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain. After the phenomenal success of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791–2), the government moved swiftly to prevent French republican ideas taking hold in Britain, beginning with the prosecution of Paine himself in absentia . There followed a spate of trials for seditious libel, often against booksellers in London who were selling cheap copies of Paine’s book. Finally, in May 1794, the government took the step of accusing the movement of treason, arresting its leaders, among them Thomas Hardy, Secretary of the London Corresponding Society, John Horne Tooke, the veteran gentleman radical, and the lecturer and poet John Thelwall. In particular, the movement was accused of conspiring to set up a convention that – as the government argued – was aimed at usurping the authority of Parliament. Their acquittal at the end of 1794 was regarded as a triumph for the jury system and gave new hope to the radical movement. In response, the government introduced a series of draconian new treason laws which effectively stamped out radical and populist movements until the Reform bills of the 1830s. This eight-volume facsimile edition reproduces, for the first time, the collected, unabridged literature relating to all the treason trials between 1792 and 1794.

The original court documents and published transcripts are rare, fragile and increasingly difficult to access.