In May 1794, hard on the Committee's "Report on Radical and Reform Societies", charges of treason were laid against thirty leading radicals including Hardy, Thomas Spence, the dramatist Thomas Holcroft, the poet, public lecturer and journalist John Thelwall, and sometime parliamentary candidate John Horne Tooke. Their trials in November misfired. The juries in London were not as ready as those in Edinburgh to accept the mere expression of political opinion as evidence of plots against King and Parliament. When the evidence running to four printed volumes failed to impress in the case of Hardy, the courts were unable to take seriously the charges against his associates: Horne Tooke jeered at the Attorney-General and clowned in the dock, and the Lord Chief Justice slept through the prosecution's summary against Thelwall.