History

• The English Parliament passed the first Treason Act in 1351. It codified seven specific acts of high treason for which the offender would be executed and his lands revert to the Crown. These offenses included planning the murder of the King, his wife or immediate family, or actually killing a high member of the King's cabinet, as well as waging war on the Crown.
  
  

Conditions

• In the 1790s, Britain was facing rising sentiments of rebellion fueled by the revolutions in France and the United States as well as rising prices and food shortages at home. Prime Minister William Pitt strongly declared that writings antithetical to the British government and Crown would not be tolerated. Tom Paine's polemic, "The Rights of Man," published in 1792, garnered a vehement response from the Pitt administration, forcing Paine to flee to France and resulting in imprisonment of booksellers who carried his tract. Mass meetings of the London Correspondence Society led to criminal charges against the radical group's leading agitators, but public sentiment assured their swift acquittal. In the wake of these embarrassing trials, King George's carriage was pelted with stones as he rode to open the Parliamentary session of 1795.
  
  

Adoption

• Finding the existing Treason Act of 1351 to be ineffective in quashing the rebellion, Parliament adopted the Treasonable Practices Act and Seditious Meetings Act, together known as the Gagging Acts of 1795. The Treasonable Practices Act made it a crime to write or speak unfavorably about the King, the monarchy as an institution, the government or the English constitution. In essence, the Act criminalized criticism of individual members of the English government as well as the institution of parliamentary monarchy. Violation of the Act was punishable by imprisonment of up to seven years per offense. The related Seditious Meetings Act disapproved of meetings of more than 50 people, and required a local magistrate's license for lectures or presentations charging a fee for admission.
  
  

Effects

• The Treasonable Practices Act had the impact of a wet blanket thrown on the nascent flames of discontent in Great Britain. The Act was rarely employed, because it did not need to be. Membership in anti-monarchy organizations dropped precipitously and their rebellious leadership was effectively silenced, or at least rendered virtually ineffective.
  
  

Modern Applications

• The Treason Act of 1351 with the amendments put in place by the Treasonable Practices Act of 1795 and a few subsequent minor amendments remain in effect today, although the death penalty for treason was abolished by England in 1998. Brooklyn-born William Joyce was hanged under the Treason Act in 1946 for his pro-Nazi radio broadcasts, despite the fact that he was not a subject of the British crown. A teenager was convicted under the Treason Act in 1981 for firing a starting pistol in the vicinity of the Queen as she rode through a review. In 2005, news reports indicate Crown Prosecutors were considering the application of the Treason Act to radical clerics being investigated in relation to speeches they made which referenced terrorist activities.
  
  

Contrast With Sedition Acts

• The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 in the United States were also intended to quash governmental criticism. The sedition portion of these acts outlawed publication of false, malicious or scandalous commentary about the government. This did not criminalize all reasoned and academic governmental criticism, as the Treasonable Practices Act did, but rather stifled media mud-slinging. The sedition portion of the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts expired in 1801, although subsequent Sedition Acts have been passed at a number of points in U.S. history.