Pitt's England

Duane was unceremoniously deposited onto the docks of Portsmouth at a distance of 100 miles from the metropolis of London. His personal floating prison had landed an embittered radical onto a country controlled by William Pitt the Younger. In Duane's view Pitt was a heavy-handed and despotic arch-Tory, but by another account he was a Prime Minister straddling the extremes of both Edmund Burke's anti-revolutionary stance and Charles James Fox's liberal response to 1789. Duane was to spend the next ten months involved in the affairs of a group – the London Corresponding Society (LCS) – which worked towards the withdrawal of England from the war in Europe and the promotion of revolution in England and Ireland.

Duane was not without hope, however, as friends had thought to send money with the William Pitt's purser, Mr Russell. With these funds Duane was able to travel to London and make contact with other people sharing a similar opinion of the state of Britain and its empire. Duane's radical circle in India resembled one of the corresponding societies of England. His movement from the Indian group to the LCS appears natural and may have been done through existing correspondence between Calcutta and London. During the next ten months Duane was engaged in a propaganda campaign against the EIC within the pages of The Telegraph: a newspaper like The Argus run by LCS members. It is unclear what his movements were but we do know that he was living in Gray's Inn by 4 September 1795. Duane possibly received help from his cousin Michael Bray, who had successfully taken over from their uncle, Mathew Duane, at the Inns of Court. We know that Division 28 of the LCS took in Gray's Inn Road and that some of the LCS ‘citizens’ gave this area as their address.

1795–6 London Corresponding Society Involvement

Alongside his work with The Telegraph, Duane took an active role in the LCS during 1795–6.