Hunt, Henry, 1773-1835; Social reformers -- Great Britain -- Biography
making a sacrifice, as he pretended, of his favourite mistress, upon
condition that an annuity of four hundred pounds should be settled upon
her. This proposal was immediately accepted, and the terms were acceded to
by the family of the afflicted personage. Though the wary old Scotchman
was delighted to get rid of his mistress upon such advantageous terms for
himself, or rather to drive such an excellent bargain, yet he all the time
professed that he was making the greatest sacrifice in the world, and
doing the greatest violence to his feelings, by parting with a beloved
object; a sacrifice which he was induced to make solely from the love and
veneration which he bore to his afflicted master. She assured us of her
belief that, by these means, he obtained the greatest favours and the most
splendid reward, while she, for the sum of four hundred a year, consented
to submit to the embraces of a madman.
The patient recovered, and she was turned adrift, without her salary being
regularly paid. She had contracted a debt of three hundred pounds, for
which she was sent to the King's Bench prison, though she convinced me, by
documents that she produced, that she had at the time seven quarters of
her salary, seven hundred pounds, due to her from the said great
personage; less than half of which would have saved her from a gaol.
This circumstance, however extraordinary it may appear, was not only
confirmed by very credible witnesses, but also by most indisputable
documentary proof; and, as a confirmation of its correctness, Mr. Dundas,
who was subsequently Lord Melville, a few days afterwards came in person
to bail her into the rules, which I sincerely believe that he never would
have done, if he had not heard of the _company_ that she had fallen into.
Mrs. M---- and her daughter were at dinner with Mr. Waddington and myself,
when Mr. Dundas sent for her out; but we made him wait till she had
finished her dinner, declaring that we would be her bail, rather than she
should submit to receive a favour from such an unnatural being. This lady
gave me a history of the then court, and she was familiar with
extraordinary anecdotes relating to most of the persons connected with the
ministers as well as the royal family. The recital of so much infamy and
intrigue, when coupled with what I had heard from Mr. Clifford, of the
practices of the law and the courts of justice, and from Dr. Gabriel, with
respect to the debaucheries of the most dignified members of the church,
and the hypocrisy of many of its puritanical preachers, really made me
almost believe that I was got into a new world, and that the men and women
of which it was composed were a different species from those with whom I
had been in the habit of associating; in fact it opened to my view such
scenes of villainy, fraud, hypocrisy, and injustice, practised upon
mankind by those who contrived to govern them by what is called religion
and law, that I involuntarily re-echoed, with an exclamation, the
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