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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 461: THE TRAITOROUS CORRESPONDENCE BILL.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

THE TRAITOROUS CORRESPONDENCE BILL.

As it was expedient, after a declaration of war, to prevent all correspondence between British subjects and the French, Sir John Scott, the attorney-general, brought in a bill called the “Traitorous Correspondence Bill,” by which it was declared high-treason to supply the existing government of France with, military stores; to purchase lands of inheritance in France; to invest money in the French funds; to underwrite insurances upon ships and goods bound from France to any part of the world; and to go from this country to France without a license under the privy-seal; it likewise prohibited the return of British subjects from that country to England without giving security. This bill was opposed as inconsistent with the treason laws of Edward III., and several of its obnoxious clauses were modified in the course of its progress. It received several alterations, also, in the lords, which were finally agreed to by the commons, and the bill passed into a law.