Having said this Mr. Hunt I feel myself equal or superior to you in many points, and when I am told that what would be cruel treatment to you would not merit a complaint from me, I can only feel contempt for the notion. I have always paid my debts freely, and commanded the respect and the credit of my neighbours, you can do no more Mr. Hunt if you were disposed, therefore I am your equal in every respect. Honesty is riches and greatness in my eye, and I • will ever war against aristocratical insolence. It is vain to talk to me about family or fortune, I acknowledge no man to be my superior upon that score. I had many thousand pounds pass through my hands as a tradesman in 1819, I had three persons in the character of shopmen and one maid servant in my employ almost throughout that year, and yet I am to be told by Mr. Hunt and his man that the bedstead I found in Dorchester Gaol was a luxury to me! I certainly objected to Mrs. Carlile's furnishing her house in any thing beyond common necessaries, under such a precarious situation as mine was in 1819; but we had at least five bedsteads for the robbers at the end of the year. I am told, that it is a question, whether the same means you once possessed would not have made me any thing but what I now profess to be: this I know, that, I was never a violent aristocrat with a family property that was not justly divided; nor did I ever commence patriot after I had broken up or squandered a fortune, and dispersed a family.

In closing the number of your Memoirs, I shall notice the last lie there contained. In a postscript to the third letter the greater portion of which I think was written in Ilchester Gaol, the Gentleman-Journeyman says, that I filled sixty pages of the Republican in addressing you; this excited my curiosity to number them, and I found them to be forty only in both letters, if I allow for the quotations made from your writings which would add three more. This is only worth notice to shew the disposition of my assailants. This same fellow wrote me a letter in January last, in which he stiled himself, "your admirer in politics and theology!"

I do not think that any thing that either you or your man can write of me will induce me to notice it publicly in future. you carry the game any further I shall continually point the attention of the public to my three letters to you; and if I see it to be necessary I will take care that they shall make a tour throughout Great Britain in the most compact and cheapest form. If ever a man was answered in any questions or insinuations that he put forth, you have been Vol. VI. No. 1.

answered by me. I have passed over nothing, and I have now only to set at rest the question about the subscription money in my possesion. To do this I cannot do better than transcribe a letter I had sketched for the purpose of forwarding this money to Mr. Johnson in Lincoln Gaol in 1820: and the reasons why this letter and money were never forwarded, I will state afterwards.

"TO MR. JOSEPH JOHNSON, LINCOLN GAOL.

SIR, "Dorchester Gaol, Oct. 1, 1820. "HAVING received, just before the breaking up of my business, the amount of nine pounds odd shillings, in various small sums, towards the relief of the sufferers at the Manchester Massacre Meeting, I now use the discretion of transmitting to you the sum of £10. to be equally divided between yourself and fellow-prisoners, Mr. Healy and Mr. Bamford. It will be expected that I give some reason for holding this money so long, which I shall do, I trust, satisfactorily, at least, to the various persons who subscribed it.

"Immediately after the Massacre was known in London, a Meeting was convened at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, in the Strand, at which Mr. Samuel Ferrand Waddington, then of Lewisham, but late an eminent merchant of the city of London, presided, and Major Cartwright, Mr. Wooler, and a few others, conducted the business of the Meeting. A subscription for the relief of the sufferers was unanimously resolved, Major Cartwright was appointed the Treasurer, and, amongst others, I was appointed a Receiver by the Meeting and subsequently by public advertisement. Agreeable to this appointment, I received the greater portion of the sum I now transmit to you. A Palace-Yard Meeting taking place soon after, in furtherance of the same object, a string of resolutions were carried, and a subscription resolved, without the least notice of what had been done at the Crown and Anchor Tavern. It was evident to all that this second Meeting was a mere electioneering trick on the behalf of Mr. Hobhouse, by Sir Francis Burdett and his partizans, for Major Cartwright, ever disposed for union and unanimity, attended this Palace-Yard Meeting, and was grossly insulted by the partizans above-mentioned, and being, with Mr. Gale Jones and many others, thrust back and violently kept back, the whole of the talking was usurped by Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Hobhouse. At this Meeting Major Cartwright was appointed a Joint Treasurer with (1 believe) a Mr. Galloway; but the Major, seeing the trick that had been practised, and feeling the insult that had been personally offered to him, on retiring home, wrote a letter to Sir Francis Burdett, in which he expressed his feelings on the occasion, and declined any 'participation in the Treasurership.

"A Meeting having taken place in Southwark on the same occasion, a junction of the Committees finally took place under the title of the Metropolitan Committee. In the mean time, before this Committee was fully and regularly formed, I happened to be present at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, when the business of completing a Committee was going on, and was proposed by some person present to become a member; this I declined, on the ground that the number of prosecutions against me, and the near approach of the time of trial, would prevent my acting as an efficient member. I was then asked whether I would receive subscriptions, as my house was well situated for that purpose; to this I acceded, as I had already been announced as a Receiver for the same object, and an order was made to the Secretary to enter my name as such. A few days after, I had a formal book of receipt authorized by the Committee left at Fleet Street, but I saw with surprize that my name, day after day, was not noticed in the advertisements of persons appointed to receive, and I felt a disinclination to continue receiving under such circumstances, and actually refused various sums. I complained to the Collector of what I conceived to be an insult, in the omission of my name, and gave him back his book. I was told by different persons that the alleged reason for the omission of my name was the supposition that it would excite religious prejudices, but I was not satisfied with any such excuse, and saw no right that I had to receive for that Committee that could allow Messrs. Galloway, Richter, and Sargeant, the Secretary at £3 per week, to use any such discretion with its resolutions.

"Having received this insult from those three persons, for it was they alone who made the subscription a sort of corporate interest, or were the acting agents of that political corporation in Westminster that has uniformly corrupted every public matter with which it has meddled, I resolved not to hand them the money I had received by a first and other appointment; and Major Cartwright having refused any concern in the Treasurership, I considered I was left to act upon my own discretion with the money I had received, so that I applied it justly; particularly, as I saw there was no union among the Committee existing, and that there were violent disputes and public protests about the application of the funds.

"I made no secret of having this money, but mentioned it in particular to Mr. Hunt, to Mr. West, and to Mr. Fulham of St. Luke's. My intention was to send it to Manchester as soon as I saw a Committee of Distribution appointed in that town, but I am not aware that any such Committee was ever appointed out of the inhabitants of Manchester; as, by what I recollect, the Westminster Committee assumed the right of distribution as well as of collection. In the midst of this unsettled affair my trials came on, and then the sentence which removed me to this Gaol, shut up my shop, and finally cleared the house of its contents. At this moment I had something else to think about; and as soon as I could get the shop opened by Mrs. Carlile, I found for months quite enough to do to

live, by collecting and making the best of the wreck of my property. The moment I found Mrs. Carlile began to recover herself, I urged the necessity of the payment of this subscription-money somewhere, but she feeling that she had had to commence business almost pennyless, and that this subscription-money had fallen into the hands of our Robbers, did not feel the same urgency upon the matter as I did. However, last month she visited me, and it was agreed, that as early as possible it should be forwarded to Lincoln Gaol for distribution as before-mentioned, as a separate subscription, I see, is going on for Mr. Hunt, and none for you and your fellow-prisoners. This appearing to me the only just and proper application, I must beg your acceptance of the enclosed accordingly.

"I am, Sir, respectfully yours,

"R. CARLILE."

Now the reason this letter and money were not forwarded to Mr. Johnson, was simply this. After Mrs. Carlile had returned to London, two or three weeks, and at the time I had hoped she would have been able to have sent off the money; she wrote me to say, that she must defer it some weeks until she could make some return by the new edition of the Political Works of Paine, she was then struggling to complete; for she had actually incurred a considerable debt with both Stationer and Printer for that object, and could not in justice to those and other creditors, pay what she did not feel to be her debt at that moment. Soon after this her own trial and verdict of Guilty took place, which again filled her with agony on account of her children, and I did not press the payment of this money any further; as there was a full £100 debt on the business when she came to Dorchester Gaol. It happened that my printer came down to see me at the same time with Mrs. Carlile in September 1820, and was witness to the agreement about sending the money to Mr. Johnson: although he, knowing we were short of cash for the job he had in hand for us, sided with Mrs. Carlile, and said he could not see after what happened to us that the money was due any where. I told him that I saw plainly Mr. Hunt was trying to trample me down, and as Mr. Hunt knew, from my information, that I had received this money, he would be sure, on some future day to make a handle of it for some sinister purpose. This was at the moment that the National Prayer came out. As it has so turned out, I am now happy that I published having possession of it last year, before any one even hinted it to me. I then purposed paying it into the Great Northern Union that was then in embryo, but the

avowed object of that Union has been so corrupt, that I have never felt justified in so doing. After looking about for a proper object for this money, I think I can award it in a manner at which no one can in justice complain, although it will be a deviation from the purpose for which it was subscribed. That purpose is gone by, and I have lately, for the first time, seen a letter from Joseph Swann, who is to fill out four years and a half in Chester Castle, describing his distress and that of his family, which letter I sent to the Printer, for the Republican immediately on receiving it, and I had hoped it would have appeared a month since. Joseph Swann has received the heaviest sentence of all the men who are suffering for political conduct, Mr. Hunt's sentence is nothing compared to it, and to Joseph Swann I award this £10; he has acted the part of a hero throughout his troubles, and as he was never any known agent of mine, and as I never heard of his name but through the papers, and this one letter mentioned, I feel no difficulty in awarding him this money.

I think the sum I received was exactly nine pounds fourteen shillings; I recollect but two of the persons who were subscribers, the one was a Captain Harman who lived on the Surrey side of the Thames, who subscribed one pound, and the other was the carpenter who fitted up my shop and subscribed five shillings. Three portions of it were instances where three different gentleman came into the shop to purchase the theological works of Paine, and on putting down a pound note refused the change saying, it might go to that or any subscription for myself. If any Subscriber objects to my award I will give him back his subscription from my own pocket. This then I hope will settle this affair, or as soon as Joseph Swann acknowledges the receipt of the amount. I do not join issue with your Gentleman-Journeyman when he says that the subscription was bona fide for the defence at York. The Committee I believe after some abuse from you made an award for that purpose, but it was never the original purport of the subscription, because the particulars of the prosecution were not then known. The subscription I understand was for the wounded sufferers, who I fear never got any thing the less for my holding what I have held. I never heard of any end or settlement to the matter, and I think the thing like most of the subscriptious of that kind, has formed a scramble for the managers and a disappointment to the sufferers.

In "The Memoirs of Henry Hunt Esq. written by him