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goes on, referring to myself:-"Without calling in question the names or characters of some of his principal supporters, who ought to act differently, suffice it to say, that this prosecution is carried on chiefly with a view of putting a stop to the meetings of the associated clubs in Sheffield; and it is hoped that, if we are fortunate enough to succeed in convicting the prisoner, it will go a great way towards curbing the insolence they have uniformly manifested, and particularly since the late acquittals."

Thus, after the lapse of nearly half a century, the true key to the measures of my adversaries against me is found. What my newspaper was during the twelve months in which these things happened, I have already shown. Files of the Iris are in existence, and the printed records cannot be falsified. In its pages, between the 4th of July, 1794, and the day of my trial, the 22d of January, 1795, there is but one advertisement from the Sheffield Constitutional Society, namely, " An Address to Mr. Joseph Gales," on his escape from persecution, acknowledging his private worth, and his public services in the cause of truth and liberty." On the liberation of three members of that body, after six months' confinement under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, to give evidence on the trials of Hardy, Horne Tooke, and others, for high treason, there also appears an account of a civic entertainment among the members of the same Society, at which the toasts and proceedings were distinguished by quite as much temperance, in feasting and speechifying, as is usually observed on such occasions. Besides these, I recollect that an address of the Society was printed at the Iris office, on some occasion which I have forgotten. I was told afterwards, that my prosecutors had deliberated between this and the patriotic song, on whether of the two it would be most expedient to indict me. Had they decided for the address, they would have found that it was no more my production than the song, for it might have been claimed by one of those who, in the draft aforesaid, are designated my “principal | supporters, who ought to act differently." Here, then, is the sum total, so far as my memory can trace, of all" the inflammatory and seditious resolutions, pamphlets, and papers" issued from my press by "the associated clubs in Sheffield;" for whose warning and example I was foredoomed to suffer, without so much as allowing me time to commit an offence to warrant condemnation on my own account. In the

farewell address to my readers, in 1825, I have stated the only occasion on which I formed a temporary connection with the Constitutional Society of Sheffield, namely, in the time of its adversity, when it became the duty of the remnant of its dismayed and scattered members to preserve from starvation the families of their brethren, in bonds under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. That Society, soon after the release of these, and the result of the trials for high treason, in London, died a natural death.-With regard to the gratuitous charge that I " occasionally wrote essays" for my predecessor's newspaper, those who made it never pretended to prove it; nor will I pretend to deny it. Had it been possible to convict me of sedition for one or all put together of these juvenile rhapsodies, I should not have escaped. It was to them that I alluded, in the address delivered at the dinner given to me by my townspeople, of all parties, in November, 1825, when I had laid down my newspaper.

Of my second offence, trial, and imprisonment, I should not feel myself justified, at this distance of time, to republish any detailed account. However political prejudice may have disqualified each of us from being a judge in his own cause, it was a personal affair between the prosecutor, a magistrate, and myself, the writer of a paragraph in the Iris reflecting hardly upon his conduct in quelling a riot at Sheffield, on the 4th of August, 1795. For this a Bill was found against me at Barnsley Sessions, in October following: I traversed to Doncaster Sessions in January, 1796. There the trial came on; and, after an extraordinary scene of contradictory evidence on both sides, a verdict was given against me, and I was sentenced to six months' imprisonment in York Castle, to pay a fine of thirty pounds to the King, and to give security to keep the peace for two years. Neither of the prosecution, the verdict, nor the scntence did I ever complain, considering all the circumstances; because, according to the law of libel, there was ground for the first, conflicting testimony that was deemed to warrant the second, and the third could not altogether be called vindictive. There and then, though very disproportionately matched, my prosecutor and I joined issue on the same ground in an open court of justice, face to face, and witness against witness. It was a fair "stand-up

fight" between us, in which I was overcome, the jury being umpires; for I count as nothing the fictions of the indictment, the speeches of counsel, and the part which the magistrates took to influence the proceedings. We cannot now meet on equal terms: he has long ago passed beyond the judgment of fallible man. To that, indeed, the survivor might appeal, and perhaps win a verdict on a new trial, where the deceased could make no defence from the grave. But I could not thus dishonour his memory, without doubly dishonouring myself, and injuring the dead more than I was ever accused of injuring the living. In this case, as in the former, after many years some of the official documents came into my possession, among which are the brief held by the leading counsel against me, a copy of the indictment, with various memoranda of evidence to be produced, and, to crown the whole, the original draft of a paragraph issued from the attorney's office, and published in the Sheffield Courant, mentioning the trial, verdict, and sentence, accompanied by a remark so malignantly vindictive, that I will not trust my hand to transcribe it, lest I should be tempted to violate my purpose to forbear from making any animadversion on any part of the proceedings against me, open or covert, in court or out of it. One fact I will state. The above paragraph (the manuscript and the print are both under my cye at this moment), in reference to the trial, summarily observes, "After a most elaborate discussion of the business, the verdict of the jury did credit to their feelings as men, and ample justice to the above magistrate's conduct." Now, of this "most elaborate discussion of the business," neither the paragraph nor the newspaper gives one syllable of particulars. On the other hand, in the Iris, a report occupying nearly six columns gave at length the examination of the witnesses on both sides, with brief notes of the pleadings, from the impossibility of comprehending the whole. There was a reason for suppression on the one part, and a reason for publication on the other.

No attempt was afterwards made to discredit this report of the only important disclosures which were brought out upon the trial, nor to supply the utter defect of the paragraph in regard to these. I must, however, distinctly state, that I never had reason to believe that the prosecutor had any hand in this ferocious exultation over the fall of one, whom the party which had volunteered their enmity to me from

my outset in public life imagined hopelessly cast down. They were mistaken; and so soon, as well as so thoroughly, were they convinced of their mistake, that from that day I do not remember I ever again experienced any annoyance from one of them. Twice indeed, in later years, I was menaced with legal visitation from persons who did not avow themselves openly, but who, when they might have fought, exercised "the better part of valour,” and, in their "discretion," let me alone.

With regard to the magistrate whom I had offended in the last-mentioned case, he took the opportunity, a few years afterwards, of showing both kindness and confidence towards me, in an affair of business; and, from his marked conciliatory conduct, I must believe that his mind was as much discharged of every degree of hostile feeling to me, as I trust mine was of resentment against him.

Of my situation in prison, I may add two or three words, for the reader's better intelligence of some allusions in the following pieces. On the first occasion I occupied a spacious apartment, and the range of a passage having no open communication with any of the adjacent rooms. I was entitled to take exercise in the Castle-yard for one hour early in the morning. Of this I never availed myself. The governor, however, informed me that I might have that indulgence at a more convenient season, if I would ask his leave. That, however, I did not feel free to do; and he, with great courtesy, occasionally sent me the keys of my barricadoed quarters to let myself out. After my second conviction, on account of infirm health, I petitioned the magistrates for the liberty of the Castle-yard, without being under obligation to the governor. And this mercy — to their honour I record it was immediately shown me by the gentlemen who, I thought, had dealt hard justice towards me at Doncaster. In other respects I had every comfort and accommodation in prison that I could desire.

I shall venture to prolong this new Introduction to my "PRISON AMUSEMENTS," by mentioning a circumstance which requires explanation from myself, who alone can give it. In the Table Talk of the late Mr. William Hazlitt, vol. i. p. 371., I find this paragraph, which I quote literally ::14 Mr. Montgomery, the ingenious and amiable poet, after he had been shut up in solitary confinement for a year and a half, for printing the Duke of Richmond's Letter on Reform, when he first walked out in the

narrow path of the adjoining field, was seized with an apprehension that he should fall over it, as if he had trod on the brink of an abrupt precipice."

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Now there is not one word of pure fact in this anecdote, which, nevertheless, was intended to be the truth throughout, believed to be so, and published to excite compassion towards the sufferer. I never printed the Duke of Richmond's Letter on Reform, I was never shut up for a year and a half in solitary confinement, and I never felt any fear of falling over the edge of a narrow path through a flat field. It might be concluded from the foregoing story, that I had been immured in a dark cell, and loaded with chains, till my eye could not bear the light without giddiness, and my limbs were paralysed for want of exercise. The iron did indeed "enter into my soul," but it went no further,—it never touched my person the nearest part of a man to himself under some circumstances. It is true that I was twice imprisoned, for three and six months, in the course of a year and a half." Now, during the first term, the room which I occupied overlooked the castle walls, and gave me ample views of the adjacent country, then passing through the changes of aspect which Nature assumes from the depth and forlornness of winter to the first blooms of a promising spring. From my window I was daily in the habit of marking these, and dwelt with peculiar delight on the well-known walk by the river Ouse, where stood a long range of full-grown trees, beyond which, on the left hand, lay certain pasture-fields that led towards a wooden windmill, propt upon one leg, on a little eminence; and the motion and configuration of whose arms, as the body was occasionally turned about, east, west, north, and south, to meet the wind from every point, proved the source of very humble but very dear pleasure, to one with whom it was even as a living thing,-the companion of his eye, and the inspirer of his thoughts, having more than once suggested grave meditations on the vanity of the world, and the flight of time.

During such reveries, I often purposed that my first ramble on recovery of my freedom should be down by that river, under those trees, across the fields beyond, and away to the windmill.

And so it came to pass. On one fine morning in the middle of April I was liberated. Immediately afterwards I sallied forth, and took my walk in that direction, from whence, with feelings which none but an emancipated captive can fully understand, I

looked back upon the Castle walls, and to the window of that chamber from which I had been accustomed to look forward, both with the eye and with hope, upon the ground which I was now treading, with a spring in my step as though the very soil were elastic under my feet. While I was thus traversing the fields,—not with any apprehension of falling over the verge of the narrow footpath, but from mere wantonness of instinct, in the joy of liberty long wished for, and, though late, come at last,-I wilfully diverged from the track, crossing it now to the right, then to the left, like a butterfly fluttering here and there, making a long course and little way, just to prove my legs, that they were no longer under restraint, but might tread where and how they pleased; and that I myself was in reality abroad again in the world,-not gazing at a section of landscape over stone walls that might not be scaled; nor, when, in the Castle-yard, the ponderous gates, or the small wicket, happened to be opened to let in or out visiters or captives, looking up the street from a particular point within the enclosure which might not be passed. Now to some wise people this may appear very childish, even in such a stripling as I then was; but the feeling was pure and natural, and the expression innocent and graceful—as every unsophisticated emotion, and its spontaneous manifestation, must be; however much, on cool reflection, a prudent man, with the eyes of all the world upon him, might choose to conceal the one and repress the other. Be this as it may, having once or twice mentioned the frolic in company, I know not through how many mouths it may have transmigrated before it reached Mr. Hazlitt in the form under which he has presented it.

After the foregoing narratives and statements of my juvenile delinquencies and sufferings, one sentence from the original Preface to the following "Confessions" will be sufficient :

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Robin! thou art gay and free,
Happy in thy liberty.

Hunger never shall distress thee

While my cates one crumb afford;
Colds nor cramps shall e'er oppress thee;
Come and share my humble board :
Robin! come and live with me,
Live-yet still at liberty.

Scon shall Spring in smiles and blushes
Steal upon the blooming year;
Then, amid the enamour'd bushes,
Thy sweet song shall warble clear:
Then shall I, too, join with thee,
Swell the Hymn of Liberty.

Should some rough unfeeling Dobbin,
In this iron-hearted age,

Seize thee on thy nest, my Robin !
And confine thee in a cage,
Then, poor prisoner! think of me,
Think-and sigh for liberty.

Feb. 2. 1795.

1 The Ouse.

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