8vo. xv, [1], 811pp, [1]. With a terminal leaf of publisher's advertisements. 20th century tan cloth, with gilt-tooled red paper lettering-piece to spine. Lightly rubbed, with a little wear to extremities. Title browned and stained, with some damp staining to corners, some light foxing and browning, fore-edges of last 3 quires singed and chipped with some loss of text.

The scarce second edition (published in the same year as the first) of an account of the trial of British radical Thomas Hardy (1752-1832), containing also the preliminaries of the trials of John Horne Tooke and John Thelwall. The three men were tried on charges of high treason for their organisation with the London Corresponding Society, a reformist organisation who, alongside several other radical groups, met in the summer of 1793 to discuss the need for British Parliamentary reform in the wake of the French Revolution.

Hardy, the secretary of the LCS, was defended by noted Whig politician and attorney Thomas Erskine, who argued that the prosecution had no substantial evidence to support their claims that the accused were intending to conduct any kind of rebellion 'with Force and Arms'. Erskine stressed the intellectual and academic methods of the LCS, defending their strictly non-violent adherence to Enlightenment principles. Hardy was fully acquitted after nine days of trial, with Erskine successfully discrediting the testimonies of the prosecution's spies.