The second main element in the government's strategy for defeating the challenge posed by radicalism in the 1790s, alongside the policy of giving instructions to local government representatives, was the use of the legal apparatus for what were essentially political ends. Prosecutions for political offences were not new in Scotland at this point, but there had been very few trials of the sort since the Act of Union, and in many respects Scots law had not been significantly ripened by practice in this area of jurisprudence and jurisdiction over the last century. When the government decided to bring those it perceived to be domestic enemies of the state before the law courts, charged with political crimes, it was therefore entering largely uncharted territory, and the political trials would– to an extent– prove to be a doubleedged sword for the authorities.

The political trials of the 1790s, both in Scotland and in England, have received considerable attention from historians, most recently in a comprehensive work by John Barrell, whose main focus is on the development of the government's argument on treason. But while these trials have been the subject of varied and extensive analyses, little attention has so far been paid to the question of sedition as a crime under Scots law, and the implications this had for the proceedings at the trials as well as the argument presented by the prosecution. Moreover, the negative reception the trials in Scotland have traditionally received– that they essentially amounted to a miscarriage of justice– may to some extent have been based on an insufficient understanding of, precisely, sedition in Scotland, and is therefore in need of some reassessment.

Since the proceedings and outcomes of the more central political trials held in Scotland are already well know, they will not be dealt with in great detail here. Instead, the emphasis has been placed on the question of sedition, on the courtroom debate on this issue, as well as the argument presented by the prosecution. A final section raises the more overall question of how effective these trials were as a political weapon for the government, as well as whether the defendants were given a fair trial.