tters to me, especially when those letters
contained any disheartening news, I have detected a tone of despondency,
a latent doubt as to whether the cause to which both of us are so firmly
bound was really progressing; whether it was not fighting against hope
to continue the battle any longer; whether it would not be wiser to
retreat to the few caves and fastnesses that were left us, and leaving
Liberty still languishing in chains, and Tyranny still rampant in the
high places of the world, to wage no longer a useless war against the
irresistible Fates. Happily, with you such moods were of the rarest: you
would have been more than mortal had not your soul at times sat in
sackcloth and ashes.

"Such seasons of doubt and gloom have come to me also; but I know that
in our secret hearts we both of us have felt that there was a
self-sustaining power, a latent vitality in our cause that nothing could
crush out utterly; that the more it was trampled on the more dangerous
it would become, and the faster it would spread. Certain great events
that have happened during the last twelve months have done more towards
the propagation of the ideas we have so much at heart than in our
wildest dreams we dare have hoped only three short years ago. Gravely
considering these things, it seems to me that the time cannot be far
distant when the contingent plan of operations as agreed upon by the
Central Committee two years ago, to which I gave in my adhesion on the
occasion of your last visit to Bon Repos, will have to replace the
scheme at present in operation, and will become the great lever in
carrying out the Society's policy in time to come.

"When the time shall be ripe, but one difficulty will stand in the way
of carrying out the proposed contingent plan. That difficulty will arise
from the fact that the Society's present expenses will then be trebled
or quadrupled, and that a vast accession to the funds at command of the
Committee for the time being will thus be imperatively necessitated. As
a step, as a something towards obviating whatever difficulty may arise
from lack of funds, I have devised to you, as Secretary of the Society,
the whole of my personal estate, amounting in the aggregate to close
upon fifteen thousand pounds. This property will not accrue to you till
my decease; but that event will happen no very long time hence. My will,
duly signed and witnessed, will be found in the hands of my lawyer.

"But it was not merely to