yself 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.

Well, I am rather poor at present; but I have L20 which is not
immediately wanted. Pray, begin a subscription for the Hunts; put down
my name for that sum, and, when I hear that you have complied with my
request, I will send it you. Now, if there are any difficulties in
the way of this scheme of ours, for the love of liberty and virtue,
overcome them. Oh! that I might wallow for one night in the Bank of
England!

_Queen Mab_ is finished and transcribed. I am now preparing the notes,
which shall be long and philosophical. You will receive it with the
other poems. I think that the whole should form one volume; but of
that we can speak hereafter.

As to the French _Encyclopedie_, it is a book which I am
desirous--very desirous--of possessing, and if you could get me a few
months' credit (being at present rather low in cash), I should very
much desire to have it.

My dear sir, excuse the earnestness of the first part of my letter. I
feel warmly on this subject, and I flatter myself that so long as your
own independence and liberty remain uncompromised, you are inclined to
second my desires.