ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the first address of the London Corresponding Society (LCS) which was published on 2 April 1792 and signed by Thomas Hardy, founder and secretary of the Society. Suggestions for this address were presented to the LCS General Committee on 26 March 1792 but each was rejected. The following day Hardy wrote to his radical confidant, John Home Tooke, outlining the difficulties he faced in putting together an acceptable first address. Thomas Paine at one point offered to write the Society’s first published declaration but was unable to devote the necessary time. It was then that Maurice Margarot, an early recruit of the LCS, composed what was to become the first address of the LCS. The manuscript was sent to the Society for Constitutional Information for advice, and following some minor amendments by Horne Tooke, the address was published in the Argus newspaper as well as distributed as a broadside, which is reproduced.
