er, the hope is expressed that
not only the neighbouring towns and villages, most of which were forming
similar societies, but also the whole country would be "united in the
same cause, which cannot fail of being the case wherever the most
excellent works of Thomas Paine find reception."[40]

Now, this banding together of societies and clubs pointed the way to the
forming of a National Convention which would truly represent the whole
nation. In judging the action of Pitt and his colleagues at this crisis,
we must remember that they had before them the alarming example of the
Jacobins Club of Paris, which had gained enormous power by its network
of affiliated clubs. This body again was modelled on the various
societies of the Illuminati in Germany, whose organizer, Weishaupt,
summed up his contention in the words: "All their union shall be carried
on by the correspondence and visits of the brethren. If we can gain but
that point, we shall have succeeded in all we want."[41] This is why the
name Corresponding Society stank in the nostrils of all rulers. It
implied a parasitic organization which, if allowed to grow, would
strangle the established Government. Signs were not wanting that this
was the aim of the new Radical Clubs. Thus the delegates of the United
Constitutional Societies who met at Norwich drew up on 24th March 1792
resolutions expressing satisfaction at the rapid growth of those bodies,
already numbering some hundreds, "which by delegates preserve a mutual
intercourse." ... "To Mr. Thomas Paine our thanks are specially due for
his first and second parts of the 'Rights of Man'; and we sincerely wish
that he may live to see his labours crowned with success in the general
diffusion of liberty and happiness among mankind." ... "We ... earnestly
entreat our brethren to increase in their Associations in order to form
one grand and extensive Union of all the friends of liberty."[42] It is
not surprising that this plan of a National Convention of levellers
produced something like a panic among the well-to-do; and it is futile
to assert that men who avowed their belief in the subversive teaching of
Part II of Paine's book were concerned merely with the Reform of
Parliament. They put that object in their public manifestoes; but, like
many of the Chartists of a later date, their ultimate aim was the
redistribution of wealth; and this it was which brought on them the
unflinching opposition of Pitt.

Nevertheless even t