Let my principles and actions be inquired into, and published: if they have been erroneous, let them become moral lessons to others; if the reverse, the instruction they will afford may more effectually answer the same purpose. I hope, Sophy, you know something of me: endeavour to communicate what you know to Mr Cole, and your mutual fears will then surely be very few. Observe that, as I have yet received no notice whatever from Government, I have the above intelligence only from report. If it be false, I shall soon be with you: if the contrary, you of course will hear from me the moment I have any thing to communicate. Be happy, act virtuously, and disdain to live the slaves of fear.’ _Newman-street, Sept. 30th, 1794._ On the same day he sent the following letter to the Morning Post, which was published the next day. ‘_To the Editor of the Morning Post._ ‘SIR, In your paper of yesterday, my name is mentioned among those said to be inserted in a bill to be presented to a Grand Jury on Thursday next, containing charges of high-treason. If this be the fact, I have no wish to influence the public opinion, by a previous affirmation of my own innocence: I desire only to appear before my country. However, as I have not been a day absent from home for more than twelve months, and never received from any magistrate the least intimation of any suspicion against me; till I have official notice, my own consciousness obliges me to consider your intelligence as unfounded. ‘In either case, it is a duty I owe myself to declare that I am now, and always shall be, ready to answer every accusation.’ The see-saw of contradictory reports continued for some days. A daily paper asserted, and as it professed, with authority, that the rumour of Mr Holcroft’s being included in the indictment was absolutely false: and a friend, who had determined (should it prove true) to give him every aid in his power, quitted town the very day before the bill was returned. Mr Holcroft was preparing to do the same. Not only he indeed, but all his friends had concluded that the report would prove false, it being so excessively improbable. In this mistake he remained till Monday, October 6th, at three in the afternoon; when another friend came running to inform him that he had that moment come from Hickes’s Hall, where he had heard an indictment for high-treason read against twelve persons, of whom he was one. Mr Holcroft’s sensations were of a kind not easily to be described; but he neither felt excessive indignation, excessive alarm, nor any of those passions which might perhaps have been excusable in his situation.