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Godwin received this unexpected communication with great kindness, and a long and interesting correspondence ensued between the two writers. Some portions of this will be found in the present volume.

From Keswick, Shelley went to Dublin, and during this period the influence of his newly acquired friend and adviser was of incalculable benefit to him, in guarding him from the consequences which his own fearless impetuosity would have entailed, in his championship of Irish wrongs. Ireland was at that time a disgrace to England and to herself. A dominant caste-proud, resolute, and vindictive, opposed to all change, and certain, in the last resort, of the support of England's strength misruled a population which was priest-ridden, ignorant, and adverse from labor. The priests themselves (with the exception of those who had been specially educated on the Continent, for the purpose of representing the interests and maintaining the dignity of their church in the more polished circles of Dublin) were scarcely more literate than the rabble over whom they possessed unbounded influence; and the Union had handed over to still meaner minds and yet more uncleanly hands the traditionary struggles for the perquisites of a delegated Court.

Loud was the cry of Irish patriotism when Shelley visited the sister island, where he flung himself, with his usual impulsive ardor, into the turbid stream of Hibernian politics. It was then that the value of Godwin's calm, experienced intellect became manifest; for there is no doubt that his letters supplied the necessary balance

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of prudence and mature thought to the youthful vehemence of Shelley's mind. This good effect was aided by an adventure which occurred to Bysshe during his advocacy of Irish grievances. On one occasion, at a meeting probably a meeting of patriots so much ill-will against the Protestants was shown, that Shelley was provoked to remark that the Protestants were fellow-Christians and fellow-subjects, and were therefore entitled to equal rights and equal toleration with the Papists. Of course, he was forthwith interrupted by savage yells. A fierce uproar ensued, and the denouncer of bigotry was compelled to be silent. At the same meeting, and afterwards, he was even threatened with personal violence, and the police suggested to him the propriety of quitting the country.

The philanthropic association which was to bestow Arcadian days on Ireland was accordingly abandoned, and, after a brief stay in the Isle of Man, and a residence of some duration in North Wales, Shelley and his wife sheltered themselves in a cottage at Lymouth, a place situated in a romantic part of North Devonshire. While here, Bysshe addressed a letter to Lord Ellenborough, touching the sentence passed by him on a man named Eaton, a London bookseller, for publishing the third part of Thomas Paine's Age of Reason. In a letter to Godwin he says:

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"What do you think of Eaton's trial and sentence? I mean not to insinuate that this poor bookseller has any characteristics in common with Socrates or Jesus Christ; still, the spirit which pillories and imprisons him is the

same which brought them to an untimely end. Still, even in this enlightened age, the moralist and the reformer may expect coercion analogous to that used with the humble yet zealous imitator of their endeavors."

The larger part of the letter to Lord Ellenborough is appended below.* It is a composition of great eloquence and logical exactness of reasoning, and the truths which it contains on the subject of universal toleration are now generally admitted. At the time of writing this letter, Shelley was only nineteen years of age; and, from his earliest boyhood to his latest years, whatever varieties of opinion may have marked his intellectual course, he never for a moment swerved from the noble doctrine of unbounded liberty of thought and speech. To him, the rights of the intellect were sacred; and all kings, teachers, or priests, who sought to circumscribe the activity of discussion, and to check by force the full development of the reasoning powers, he regarded as enemies to the independence of man, who did their utmost to destroy the spiritual essence of our being.

"A LETTER to LORD ELLENBOROUGH, occasioned by the Sentence which he passed on Mr. D. J. EATON, as publisher of the Third Part of Paine's Age of Reason.'

"Deorum offensa, Diis curæ.'

"It is contrary to the mild spirit of the Christian religion; for no sanction can be found under that dispensation which will warrant a

* The omitted portions are the passages which Shelley introduced into the notes to Queen Mab, and which are printed in the collected

edition of his works.

Government to impose disabilities and penalties upon any man on account of his religious opinions.' - MARQUIS WELLESLEY'S SPEECH. -Globe, July 2.

"ADVERTISEMENT. I have waited impatiently for these last four months, in the hope that some pen fitter for the important task would have spared me the perilous pleasure of becoming the champion of an innocent man. This may serve as an excuse for delay to those who think that I have let pass the aptest opportunity; but it is not to be supposed that in four short months the public indignation raised by Mr. Eaton's unmerited suffering can have subsided.

"MY LORD,

"TO LORD ELLENBOROUGH.

"As the station to which you have been called by your country is important, so much the more awful is your responsibility; so much the more does it become you to watch lest you inadvertently punish the virtuous and reward the vicious.

"You preside over a Court which is instituted for the suppression of crime, and to whose authority the people submit on no other conditions than that its decrees should be conformable to justice.

"If it should be demonstrated that a judge had condemned an innocent man, the bare existence of laws in conformity to which the accused is punished would but little extenuate his offence. The inquisitor, when he burns an obstinate heretic, may set up a similar plea; yet few are sufficiently blinded by intolerance to acknowledge its validity. It will less avail such a judge to assert the policy of punishing one who has committed no crime. Policy and morality ought to be deemed synonymous in a court of justice; and he whose conduct has been regulated by the latter principle is not justly amenable to any penal law for a supposed violation of the former. It is true, my Lord, laws exist which suffice to screen you from the animadversion of any constituted power, in consequence of

the unmerited sentence which you have passed upon Mr. Eaton; but there are no laws which screen you from the reproof of a nation's disgust- none which ward off the just judgment of posterity, if that posterity will deign to recollect you.

"By what right do you punish Mr. Eaton? What but antiquated precedents, gathered from times of priestly and tyrannical domination, can be adduced in palliation of an outrage so insulting to humanity and justice? Whom has he injured? What crime has he committed? Wherefore may he not walk abroad like other men, and follow his accustomed pursuits? What end is proposed in confining this man, charged with the commission of no dishonorable action? Wherefore did his aggressor avail himself of popular prejudice, and return no answer but one of commonplace contempt to a defence of plain and simple sincerity? Lastly, when the prejudices of the jury, as Christians, were strongly and unfairly inflamed * against this injured man, as a Deist, wherefore did not you, my Lord, check such unconstitutional pleading, and desire the jury to pronounce the accused innocent or criminal † without reference to the particular faith which he professed?

"In the name of justice, what answer is there to these questions? The answer which Heathen Athens made to Socrates is the same with which Christian England must attempt to silence the advocates of this injured man. 'He has questioned established opinions.' Alas! the crime of inquiry is one which religion never has forgiven. Implicit faith and fearless inquiry have in all ages been irreconcilable enemies. Unrestrained philosophy has in every age opposed itself to the reveries of credulity and fanaticism. The truths of astronomy demonstrated by Newton have superseded astrology; since the modern discoveries in chemistry, the philosopher's stone has no

* See the Attorney-General's speech.

† By Mr. Fox's Bill (1791) juries are, in cases of libel, judges both of the law and the fact.

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