Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/65

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AT THE BAR OF THE ASSEMBLY.
45

pany with Dr. Hudson, drank "Success to the French Republic over all Europe." Other diners thereupon toasted "The King," and an altercation ensued, the result being that Pigott and Hudson were taken before a magistrate, shouting sedition from the coach windows on the way. They were committed for trial, and five days afterwards applied for release on bail, which was fixed at £250, but I find no record of any further proceedings. This Pigott may have been the "Jean Picotte" who was imprisoned in Paris from October 1793 to October 1794.

Let us pass from the franc original, as Madame Roland styles the Shropshire Pythagorean, to James Watt, junior, son of the great inventor, who likewise represented his country in a cosmopolitan procession. This young man of twenty-two had formed an intimacy at Manchester with an ardent politician, Thomas Cooper, a druggist, and towards the end of 1791 the Constitutional Society of that town deputed both of them to carry an address of congratulation to the Jacobin Club. Watt[1] was the hero of the dramatic sitting of the 18th December, so vividly depicted in Carlyle's Essays, when the British, American, and French flags were suspended from the ceiling, and when a deputation of ladies presented to the "Constitutional Whig" an ark of alliance containing the new map of France, the

  1. As shown by a letter from the London Constitutional Society thanking the Jacobins for their reception of Cooper and Watt.