What was the attitude of Pitt towards these events? Ultimately he was responsible for these unjust and vindictive sentences; and it is a poor excuse to urge that he gave Dundas a free hand in Scottish affairs. Still, it is unquestionable that the initiative lay with the two Dundases. If any Englishman exerted influence on the sentences it was the Lord Chancellor, Loughborough.[303] He treated with contempt the motion of Earl Stanhope on 31st January 1794 for an examination into the case of Muir, when the Earl found himself in the position which he so much coveted--a minority of one. On the cases of Muir and Palmer coming before the Commons (10th March), Pitt upheld the Scottish Court of Justiciary in what was perhaps the worst speech of his whole career. He defended even the careful selection of jurymen hostile to Muir on the curious plea that though they were declared loyalists, yet they might be impartial as jurymen. He further denied that there had been any miscarriage of justice, or that the sentence on the "daring delinquents" needed revision. And these excuses for biassed and vindictive sentences were urged after Fox had uttered a noble and manly plea for justice, not for mercy. Grey bitterly declared that Muir was to be sent for fourteen years to Sydney for the offence of pleading for Reform, which Pitt and the Duke of Richmond advocated twelve years before. They sat in the King's Cabinet: Muir was sent to herd with felons. This taunt flew wide of the mark. Pitt in his motions for Reform had always made it clear that, while desirous of "a moderate and substantial Reform," he utterly repudiated universal suffrage. If those were his views in 1782-5, how could he accept the Radical programme now that it included the absurd demand for annual Parliaments? None the less Pitt was answerable for the action of the Home Minister in referring the sentences back to the judges who inflicted them--a course of conduct at once cowardly and farcical. Pitt's speech also proves him to have known of the irregularities that disgraced the trials. But he, a lawyer, condoned them and applauded the harsh and vindictive sentences. In short, he acted as an alarmist, not as a dispenser of justice.