Considering, then, these feelings, you will not be surprised at the inconceivable emotions with which I learned your existence and your dwelling.  I had enrolled your name in the list of the honourable dead.  I had felt regret that the glory of your being had passed from this earth of ours.  It is not so; you still live, and, I firmly believe, are still planning the welfare of human kind.

I have but just entered on the scene of human operations; yet my feelings and my reasonings correspond with what yours were.  My course has been short, but eventful.  I have seen much of human prejudice, suffered much from human persecution, yet I see no reason hence inferable which should alter my wishes for their renovation.  The ill-treatment I have met with has more than ever impressed the truth of my principles on my judgement.  I am young, I am ardent in the cause of philanthropy and truth; do not suppose that this is vanity; I am not conscious that it influences this portraiture.  I imagine myself dispassionately describing the state of my mind.  I am young; you have gone before me—­I doubt not, are a veteran to me in the years of persecution.  Is it strange that, defying prejudice as I have done; I should outstep the limits of custom’s prescription, and endeavour to make my desire useful by a friendship with William Godwin?

I pray you to answer this letter.  Imperfect as may be my capacity, my desire is ardent and unintermitted.  Half an hour would be at least humanely employed in the experiment.  I may mistake your residence; certain feelings, of which I may be an inadequate arbiter, may induce you to desire concealment; I may not, in fine, have an answer to this letter.  If I do not, when I come to London, I shall seek for you.  I am convinced I could represent myself to you in such terms as not to be thought wholly unworthy of your friendship; at least, if desire for universal happiness has any claim upon your preference, that desire I can exhibit.  Adieu!  I shall earnestly await your answer.

To THOMAS HOOKHAM

A subscription for Hunt

February 1813.

MY DEAR SIR,

I am boiling with indignation at the horrible injustice and tyranny of the sentence pronounced on Hunt and his brother; and it is on this subject that I write to you.  Surely the seal of abjectness and slavery is indelibly stamped upon the character of England.

Although I do not retract in the slightest degree my wish for a subscription for the widows and children of those poor men hung at York, yet this L1000 which the Hunts are sentenced to pay is an affair of more consequence.  Hunt is a brave, a good, and an enlightened man.  Surely the public, for whom Hunt has done so much, will repay in part the great debt of obligation which they owe the champion of their liberties and virtues; or are they dead, cold, stone-hearted, and insensible—­brutalized by centuries of unremitting bondage?  However that may be, they surely may be excited into some slight acknowledgement of his merits.  Whilst hundreds of thousands are sent to the tyrants of Russia, he pines in a dungeon, far from all that can make life desired.