Now, this banding together of societies and clubs pointed the way to the forming of a National Convention which would truly represent the whole nation. In judging the action of Pitt and his colleagues at this crisis, we must remember that they had before them the alarming example of the Jacobins Club of Paris, which had gained enormous power by its network of affiliated clubs. This body again was modelled on the various societies of the Illuminati in Germany, whose organizer, Weishaupt, summed up his contention in the words: "All their union shall be carried on by the correspondence and visits of the brethren. If we can gain but that point, we shall have succeeded in all we want."[41] This is why the name Corresponding Society stank in the nostrils of all rulers. It implied a parasitic organization which, if allowed to grow, would strangle the established Government. Signs were not wanting that this was the aim of the new Radical Clubs. Thus the delegates of the United Constitutional Societies who met at Norwich drew up on 24th March 1792 resolutions expressing satisfaction at the rapid growth of those bodies, already numbering some hundreds, "which by delegates preserve a mutual intercourse." ... "To Mr. Thomas Paine our thanks are specially due for his first and second parts of the 'Rights of Man'; and we sincerely wish that he may live to see his labours crowned with success in the general diffusion of liberty and happiness among mankind." ... "We ... earnestly entreat our brethren to increase in their Associations in order to form one grand and extensive Union of all the friends of liberty."[42] It is not surprising that this plan of a National Convention of levellers produced something like a panic among the well-to-do; and it is futile to assert that men who avowed their belief in the subversive teaching of Part II of Paine's book were concerned merely with the Reform of Parliament. They put that object in their public manifestoes; but, like many of the Chartists of a later date, their ultimate aim was the redistribution of wealth; and this it was which brought on them the unflinching opposition of Pitt.
Nevertheless even these considerations do not justify him in opposing the reformers root and branch. The greatest statesman is he who distinguishes between the real grievances of a suffering people and the visionary or dangerous schemes which they beget in ill-balanced brains. To oppose moderate reformers as well as extremists is both unjust and unwise. It confounds together the would-be healers and the enemies of the existing order. Furthermore, an indiscriminate attack tends to close the ranks in a solid phalanx, and it should be the aim of a tactician first to seek to loosen those ranks.