While my _friends_ were acting in this manner, my enemies were not idle, and the agents of Government, in order to injure me in the opinion of the public, not only vilified and abused and libelled me from day to day, in the public newspapers, but they actually caused a placard to be printed and posted all over the metropolis, which was headed "_Mr. Hunt hissed out of the City of Bristol_," and contained all sorts of infamous falsehoods and scurrilous abuse. It appeared from the newspapers that a boy, of the name of Thomas Dugood, had been committed to prison, by a Police Magistrate, for having pulled down one of these posting-bills. I immediately set about an inquiry, to find out the poor boy, to endeavour to relieve him from his imprisonment, and to gain him some redress for the persecution which he had suffered. To discover where the boy was, I went to the Police Office, and, after a great deal of shuffling, I was directed to Coldbath-fields Prison, which, as I subsequently found, was the wrong gaol, the boy having been committed to the New Prison. In the mean time, however, finding that I was resolved to go to the bottom of the business, they had released the boy. At length I found him out at his lodgings, and learned from him that he had been confined for several days among the vilest felons. I took him to the Police Office, to identify the Magistrate that committed him, and there I caused the police officer, Limbrick, to be placed at the bar, for robbing the boy of his books and money at the time he was apprehended. The inquiry ended in the said police officer returning the boy his books and money, and confessing that he was ordered to attend the posting of the said bills, and to protect them from being pulled down after they were posted. The bills were printed at the office of the Hue and Cry, near Temple-bar, and an agent of the Government paid the bill-sticker a large sum for the posting of them in the night. Finding that I could get no redress for the boy at the Police Office, I took him into the Court of King's Bench, and appealed to the Judges. But Lord Ellenborough could do nothing for him. By the stir which I made, however, the case got into all the papers, and the conduct of the Government was completely exposed. I then caused a petition from Dugood to be presented to the House by Lord Folkestone, and another petition of my own, by Lord Cochrane. The Under Secretary of State, Mr. Hiley Addington, promised that the conduct of the Police Magistrate should be inquired into; but ultimately it was ascertained that Lord Sidmouth had no power to interfere. The Magistrate, Mr. Sellon, who had committed the boy, was not a Police Magistrate, but a Magistrate of the county of Middlesex; therefore his Lordship could not interfere, and the boy must, forsooth, proceed _at law_ against the Magistrate. I shall here insert the petitions that were presented to the House, which will place this transaction in a clear