Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. — Volume 1

by Henry Hunt

All the particulars of the trial and the execution of Colonel Despard are fresh in my memory; but I shall be much obliged to some friend, who may chance to read this, to send me the Trial itself, through my publisher, Mr. Dolby. I shall also be much pleased, if some one will furnish me with the names of those persons who were waiting in readiness to come forward and prove that the witnesses, who swore to the facts against the colonel, were persons of the most infamous character, and not worthy to believed upon their oaths; which persons were neglected to be called by Mr. Sergeant Best. Clifford told me their names often, but they do not occur to me now; therefore I shall be obliged to some one to furnish me with the particulars.

When we got back to the King's Bench, we were informed, by Mr. Waddington, that there had been a great inquiry for me in my absence, as some friends out of the country had been to visit me, and had, foolishly enough, made much stir in the King's Bench in their endeavour to find me. Mr. Waddington, however, having learned what was going on, satisfied their inquiries so far as to induce them to be quiet, and promise to call the next day. Some of my readers will be surprised that a prisoner should have been from home! But the fact was, that I was committed to the custody of the Marshal of the Court for six weeks, and I had given him ample security for being at all times ready to appear, in case he should be called upon to produce his prisoner. They were not then so particular as they now are.

The visit to the Tower made a lasting impression upon my mind, and, after what I had witnessed, I was easily persuaded by Mr. Clifford that the account which he gave me of the treatment of other prisoners confined under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus act, was perfectly true. These horrible facts created in my breast a deep-rooted never-ceasing antipathy to that tyranny which is perpetrated under the disguise, under the false colour, the mere forms of law and justice, and sanctioned by the hypocritical mummeries of superstition, instead of real religion. After dinner, Clifford described to us a scene of which he had been a spectator in the Tower, the week before, when he went there with Mrs. Despard to consult with the colonel, and to make his will; the colonel being then, and having long been labouring under a serious complaint, which had been brought on by the length of his confinement, and which was considered as dangerous by his physician. During the whole of that time the beef-eaters remained in the room so that even the sacred obligation of making his last will could not be performed, unless it was done in the presence and in the hearing of the officers of the Tower; and they actually became the subscribing witnesses to his will.

I had now become acquainted with many political characters, and I was frequently invited by Mr. Clifford to go down to Wimbledon with him, on a Sunday, to join the public parties of Mr. Horne Tooke, from whom he promised to insure me a hearty welcome. Deep-rooted vulgar prejudice against this extraordinary and highly gifted man had, however, got such possession of my feelings, that I continually made some excuse; for I had imbibed a notion that he was an artful intriguing person, of an insinuating address, who frequently led young politicians into scrapes and difficulties. My idea of him in politics was, that he was a violent Jacobin, and an enemy to his King and country; and this was quite enough to make me avoid his company. The real fact was, that I was afraid to trust myself in his society. I had no wish to become a politician, and as I found that the principles of liberty, which Mr. Clifford inculcated, had made a considerable impression upon my mind, I was afraid to encourage too far my natural propensity to resist injustice, oppression, and tyranny. I did not wish to fan the flame which Mr. Clifford's eloquence and convincing arguments had lighted in my breast. Another reason for my refusing to make one of the Wimbledon parties was, the probability that I should there meet with Sir Francis Burdett, whom I was induced to look upon almost as a political madman, a dangerous firebrand in the hands of Mr. Tooke, who appeared to me to be nothing less than a designing incendiary. Mr. Clifford took some pains to persuade me out of my ridiculous notions; yet, in the account which he gave me of Mr. Tooke's character, he in some measure confirmed me in the opinion that I had previously formed, as Mr. Tooke certainly made Sir F. Burdett a puppet to carry on his hostility against those ministers who had persecuted him, and aimed a deadly blow at his life.

Mr. Tooke was a man of profound talent, a persevering friend of liberty, and an implacable foe to the measures of Mr. Pitt. But he only supported partial, not general liberty: he was no friend of universal suffrage; he supported the householder, or rather the direct tax paying suffrage. To those who contended for universal suffrage, namely, the Duke of Richmond, Major Cartwright, and others, he made this comprehensive, intelligible reply, "You may go all the way to Windsor, if you please, but I shall stop short at Hounslow;" thus implying, that he was not prepared to give political freedom to more than one half of the people, that he would not go farther than Hounslow, which is not half way to Windsor. Sir Francis Burdett gloried in being thought a disciple of Mr. Tooke.

The Sunday parties at Wimbledon were composed of the disaffected persons in London and Westminster. Amongst the number stood pre-eminent the noted Charing-Cross tailor, Frank Place, who was always an avowed republican by profession; poor Samuel Miller, the shoemaker, in Skinner-street, Snow-hill; poor old Thomas Hardy, and many others, with whom I did not become acquainted till some time after this period, though I collected their characters from my friend Clifford. Mr. Thelwall had cut the concern, and set up in another line, that of a fashionable teacher of elocution.

At this period my taste leaned more to the sports of the field, to hunting, shooting, and fishing, than to any thing else; and as these amusements were more congenial to my habits and my large farming concerns in the country, I never, while I was the first time in prison, sought much for political information, though I necessarily heard a great deal of politics from my friends Waddington and Clifford, as well as from numerous political characters with whom I became acquainted, in consequence of their coming to visit the former gentleman. Indeed, seldom a day passed without seeing some half dozen or half score of them. Mr. Waddington's friends were almost all opposition men in politics; but his relations were one and all backbone loyalists, or rather royalists.

My young friend, William Butcher, was delighted with the society of Mr. Clifford. Butcher was a disciple of Thomas Paine; he had been bred up in a country village, where the clergyman, Mr. Evans, of Little Bedwin, who was his associate, had instilled into his mind all the principles of Paine, both political and theological, and consequently Butcher was delighted with the society that he had met with at our table. Butcher was a famous great arm-chair politician; over the bottle he would be as valiant as any man, yet he would never act. The reason he used to assign for never meddling in active politics was, that, except in a republic, no private citizen could ever attain the eminence of being the first man in the country; and no man, he thought, could have a proper stimulus, unless he could hope to be placed at the head of the government. Washington was his idol, and the American constitution was his creed in politics. He was enraptured to hear me listen with so much earnestness and attention to the political dogmas of Clifford, as he was pleased to call them; for Mr. Clifford never professed to wish for a republican government; he always contended that the English constitution, if it were administered in its purity, was quite good enough for Englishmen. In this opinion I then concurred with him, and from this opinion I have never once in my life swerved, up to this hour. A government of King, Lords, and Commons, so that the latter are fairly chosen by all the commons, would secure to us the full enjoyment of rational liberty. I am for that liberty which is secured and protected by the government of the laws, and not by the government of the sword. But those laws must be such as are made by the whole commons, the whole people of England, and not the arbitrary laws that are made by the few for the government of the whole; not the laws that are made by the few, for the partial and unjust benefit of the few, at the expence and cost of the whole.

Mr. Clifford was the brother-in-law of Sir Charles Wolseley, the worthy Baronet's first lady being Mr. Clifford's sister. My good and excellent friend, and true radical, Sir Charles Wolseley, baronet, is, as well as myself, the political disciple of the honest Counsellor Clifford. If Clifford, poor fellow! were now alive, how he would laugh to see two of his staunchest and most disinterested political disciples caught in the toils of the boroughmongers! But he would also laugh to see the melancholy state to which the said boroughmongers are reduced! Now they have caught us they do not know what to do with us.

Through Mr. Clifford I learned how they managed matters in the courts, and Mr. Waddington, who by this time had had considerable experience, was most violent against the injustice of the persecution which he had experienced. At this period he possessed a large quantity of hops, perhaps half the hops in the kingdom, which he had purchased upon a speculation, that there would be a very bad crop. His calculations turned out to be correct, and the hops that he had purchased at ten pounds a hundred were now worth twenty-two and twenty-three pounds. They were all in the Borough, and he was selling them off, at this advance in price, when the conspiracy was formed against him, at the head of which was Mr. Timothy Brown, of the firm of Whitbread and Brown. Mr. Pitt, in order to punish Mr. Waddington, for calling the meeting at the Paul's Head Tavern, in the City, to petition the King for peace, and the removal of ministers, lent himself and his agents to further the objects of this conspiracy of brewers against Mr. Waddington; and as Kenyon, the chief justice, was a devoted instrument of the minister's, Mr. Waddington was not only fined and sentenced to six months imprisonment, for forestalling hops, but acts of parliament were passed to permit the brewers to use foreign hops, quassia, or any other drug, or ingredient, as a substitute. By these unjustifiable and partial proceedings, the very same hops that were worth, and had been selling at, twenty-three pounds a hundred, were reduced down to five pounds, and even to three pounds a hundred.