Though it was less sudden and hasty than Hogg imagined, Shelley’s withdrawal from Ireland was made three weeks sooner than the time he appointed for the departure, when he was still hopeful for the success of his intervention between the Irish people and their despotic rulers. Whilst writing his last letter from Ireland to William Godwin (the letter in which he says nothing of his project for a new _History of Ireland_ to the philosopher, whom he affects to treat with unqualified confidence), Shelley had determined to leave Dublin in the first week of the ensuing month, and was already making arrangements for migrating to Wales. One of his preliminary measures was to fill a large deal box with the few copies of his _Address to the Irish People_ still remaining on his hand, the much larger number of his second Irish pamphlet yet resting in his possession, and the greater part of the edition of his _Declaration of Rights_,--the broadsides with which he hoped to rouse the farmers of his native county to a perception of their political grievances. This large deal box was addressed to Miss Hitchener, Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, and sent on board the boat for Holyhead, whence Shelley imagined it would pass without observation to the philosophical schoolmistress. In the absence of any person, duly authorized by its owner to pass it through the custom-house, this heavy box was in due course opened, and searched at Holyhead, by Mr. Pierce Thomas, Surveyor of Customs, who, writing to the Secretary of State for the Home Office an account of the inflammatory literature discovered in the chest, also put himself in communication with the Holyhead agent of the General Post Office. Hence the correspondence (still preserved at the Record Office) between secretaries of high degree and local officers of mean estate respecting the big box and its criminatory contents, nothing of which was more likely to agitate the official mind than the following letter from Harriett Shelley to her husband’s dear and incomparable friend Miss Hitchener, who had recently adopted the name of Portia, in lieu of her rightful Christian name Eliza (a name already appropriated in ‘Percy’s little circle’ to Miss Westbrook):-- ‘_Dublin, March 18th, 1812._ ‘MY DEAR PORTIA,--As Percy has sent you such a large box, so full of inflammable matter, I think I may be allowed to send a little, but not of such a nature as his. I sent you two letters in a newspaper, which I hope you received safe from the intrusion of Postmasters. I sent one of the pamphlets to my Father in a newspaper, which was opened and charged; but which was very trifling compared with what you and Godwin paid.