Note 938 — Chapter VII · (continued 2)

In 1793, Roscoe writes: ‘Every man is called on to be a spy upon his brother.’ Life of Roscoe, vol. i. p. 127. Compare Fox's statement (Parl. Hist. vol. xxx. p. 21), that what government had done was, ‘to erect every man, not merely into an inquisitor, but into a judge, a spy, an informer,—to set father against father, brother against brother; and in this way you expect to maintain the tranquillity of the country.’ See also vol. xxx. p. 1529; and a remarkable passage, in Coleridge's Biog. Lit. (vol. i. p. 192), on the extent of ‘secret defamation,’ in and after 1793. For further evidence of this horrible state of society, see Mem. of Holcroft, vol. ii. pp. 150, 151; Stephens's Mem. of Horne Tooke, vol. ii. pp. 115, 116.