ABSTRACT
The House of Commons removed some uncertainties and created others when it crushed the effort of the Friends of the People. The radical societies lost their illusions about Parliament. The LCS had never trusted it to enact reform and the fate of the petitions proved their point. In this first general reform convention, held in Edinburgh and attended by delegates from some seventy Scottish societies, the reformers showed themselves at their best and their worst. The Convention, after hearing it read, agreed that it contained treason and that in spite of Muir's bravado the Convention would be held responsible for it. The vote in 1793 showed that the House of Commons was more strongly averse to reform than it had been ten years before. The reform campaign, twenty years old, seemed to have achieved nothing at all. Even the radicals, believers, might weary of paying dues, attending meetings, passing resolutions, and corresponding with one another.
