"Sir: I should think it unnecessary to inform you, that the purport of his Majesty's proclamation in the Month of May last, and the numerous meetings which are daily taking place both in Town and Country, are for the avowed purpose of suppressing treasonable and seditious writings amongst which Mr. Payne's Rights of Man ranks most conspicuous. Were I not informed you have taken some pains in spreading that publication, I write to say If you don't from this time adopt a different kind of conduct you will be taken notice of in such way as may prove very disagreeable. "The Eyes of the Country are upon you and you will do well in future to shew yourself faithful to the Master who employs you. "I remain, "Your Hble servant, "(Signed) Jos. Boultbee. Baxterby, 15th Deer., '92. "N. B. The letter was written the next morning after the Meeting where most of the Loyal souls got drunk to an uncommon degree. They drank his Majesty's health so often the reckoning amounted to 7s. 6d. each. One of the informers threw down a shilling and ran away." It was, indeed, a hard time for reformers in England. Among them were many refined gentlemen who felt that it was no country for a thinker and scholar to live in. Among the pathetic pictures of the time was that of the twelve scholars, headed by Coleridge and Southey, and twelve ladies, who found the atmosphere of England too impure for any but slaves to breathe, and proposed to seek in America some retreat where their pastoral "pantisocrasy" might be realized. Lack of funds prevented the fulfilment of this dream, but that it should have been an object of concert and endeavor, in that refined circle at Bristol, is a memorable sign of that dreadful time. In the absence of means to form such communities, preserving the culture and charm of a society evolved out of barbarism, apart from the walls of a remaining political barbarism threatening it with their ruins, some scholars were compelled, like Coleridge, to rejoin the feudalists, and help them to buttress the crumbling castle. They secured themselves from the social deterioration of living on wild "honey-dew" in a wilderness, at cost of wearing intellectual masks. Some fled to America, like Cobbett. But others fixed their abode in Paris, where radicalism was fashionable and invested with the charm of the _salon_ and the theatre.