As a friend to Reform, he had, in his journal, at first supported Pitt’s ministry, which had set out on the same principle, but which, when the revolutionary movement in France threatened to overthrow all government, abandoned all Reform, as a thing not then safe to set about.  From this change of views Mr. Gales dissented, and still advocated Reform.  So, again, as to the French Revolution, not yet arrived at the atrocities which it speedily reached,—­he saw no need of making war upon it.  In its outset, he had, along with Fox and other Liberals, applauded it; for it then professed little but what Liberals wished to see brought about in England.  He still thought it good for France, though not for his own country.  Thus, moderate as he was, he was counted in the Opposition and jealously watched.

It was in the autumn of 1792, while he was gone upon a journey of business, that a King’s-messenger, bearing a Secretary-of-State’s warrant for the seizure of Mr. Gales’s person, presented himself at his house.  For this proceeding against him the following facts had given occasion.  In his office was employed a printer named Richard Davison,—­a very quick, capable, useful man, and therefore much trusted,—­but a little wild, withal, at once with French principles and religion, with conventicles, and those seditious clubs that were then secretly organized all over the island.  This person corresponded with a central club in London, and had been rash enough to write them, just then, an insurrectionary letter, setting forth revolutionary plans, the numbers, the means they could command, the supplies of arms, etc., that they were forming.  This sage epistle was betrayed into the hands of the Government.  The discreet Dick they might very well have hanged; but that was not worth while.  From his connection with the “Register,” they supposed him to be only the agent and cover for a deeper man,—­its proprietor; and at the latter only, therefore, had they struck.  Nothing saved him from the blow, except the casual fact of his absence in another country, and their being ignorant of the route he had taken.  This his friends alone knew, and where to reach him.  They did so, at once, by a courier secretly despatched; and he, on learning what awaited him at home, instead of trusting to his innocence, chose rather to trust the seas; and, making his way to the coast, took the only good security for his freedom, by putting the German Ocean between him and pursuit.  He sailed for Amsterdam, where arriving, he thence made his way to Hamburg, at which city he had decided that his family should join him.  To England he could return only at the cost of a prosecution; and though this would, of necessity, end in an acquittal, it was almost sure to be preceded by imprisonment, while, together, they would half-ruin him.  It was plain, then, that he must at once do what he had long intended to do, go to America.