The year 1818 commenced with a great public dinner at the City of London Tavern, to celebrate the third centenary of the Reformation, at which dinner one thousand five hundred persons attended. On the 27th of January the Parliament was opened by commission, and the usual speech was made, and its echo, the address, was voted without any opposition: a bill was now brought into the House to restore the Habeas Corpus Act. A great meeting took place at the City of London Tavern, Alderman Waithman in the chair, where a subscription was opened for Mr. Hone, which ultimately amounted to more than three thousand pounds. Than this measure, nothing can more clearly show the character of the city patriot, and those who took a lead in political matters in the metropolis. While Mr. Hone was under persecution, and even up to the day of his trial, he was totally neglected and deserted; neither Mr. Waithman, nor any of those who afterwards came forwards to assist him in such a liberal way, gave him then the slightest countenance or support; nay, they even shunned and abandoned him, and he actually went into court almost alone, and probably without the means of hiring counsel, which was, in fact, a most fortunate circumstance for him, as, had he placed his case in the hands of counsel, I will warrant that he would have been found guilty upon each of the charges preferred against him; however, as soon as Mr. Hone had obtained a verdict of _not guilty_, these fair-weather patriots began to flock round him in order to share the honour and popularity which they now saw he was likely to obtain. This is too much the way of the world; and if Mr. Hone's jury had said guilty, instead of not guilty, if he had been tried by a country instead of a London special jury, he might have gone quickly to gaol, abandoned and ruined, before any of the above gentry would have stirred one inch to have saved him from rotting there. A bill of indemnity was now brought in, to protect the Ministers against the legal consequences of their horrid abuses of power, during the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Most of those who had been incarcerated were now released upon their own recognizance; but Mr. Benbow, of Manchester, bravely refused to enter into any recognizance, and he was liberated without it. The Messrs. Evans followed his example, and were also liberated without bail.