ular frequenters of Mr. Johnson's house, and the
leaders of conversation during his evenings, were Reformers. Men like
Paine and Fuseli and Dr. Priestley were, each in his own fashion, seeking
to discover the true nature of human rights. As the Reformation in the
sixteenth century had aimed at freeing the religion of Christ from the
abuses and errors of centuries, and thus restoring it to its original
purity, so the political movement of the latter half of the eighteenth
century had for object the destruction of arbitrary laws and the
re-establishment of government on primary principles. The French
Revolution and the American Rebellion were but means to the greater end.
Philosophers, who systematized the dissatisfaction which the people felt
without being able to trace it to its true source, preached the necessity
of distinguishing between right and wrong _per se_, and right and wrong
as defined by custom. This was the doctrine which Mary heard most
frequently discussed, and it was but the embodiment of the motives which
had invariably governed her actions from the time she had urged her
sister to leave her husband. She had never, even in her most religious
days, been orthodox in her beliefs, nor conservative in her conduct. As
she said in a letter just quoted, she considered right and wrong in the
abstract, and never shielded herself by words or local opinions.
Hitherto, owing chiefly to her circumstances, she had been content to
accept her theory as a guide for herself in her relations to the world
and her fellow-beings. But now that her scope of influence was extended,
she felt compelled to communicate to others her moral creed, which had
assumed definite shape.

Her first public profession of her political and social faith was her
answer to Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution," which had
summoned all the Liberals and Reformers in England to arms. Many came
forward boldly and refuted his arguments in print. Mary was among the
foremost, her pamphlet in reply to his being the first published. Later
authorities have given precedence to Dr. Priestley's, but this fact is
asserted by Godwin in his Memoirs, and he would hardly have made the
statement at a time when there were many living to deny it, had it not
been true. These answers naturally were received with abuse and sneers by
the Tories. Burke denounced his female opponents as "viragoes and English
_poissardes_;" and Horace Walpole wrote of them as "Amazonia