"The Red Cock" still crowed, and incendiary fires were still the order of the day, in spite of the commissions to examine the numerous prisoners in several counties. Captain Swing was rampant, and his letters, if not always logical, as in the following instance, were very numerous. The _Exeter Gazette_, quoted in the _Times_ of January 3rd, says-- "The following 'Swing' letter is the most ingenious commentary which we have met with on the present infatuated attempts to destroy machinery. Here is a fellow threatening the life of a respectable person, because he is the means of reducing the number of water-carriers, and supplies the inhabitants with a quantity of that prime necessary of life, on terms cheaper than they could obtain it from the moveable reservoirs which convey some fifty or sixty gallons at a time round the town, at the rate of a halfpenny a pailfull. The climax of the joke is the threat which it holds out, of burning the Waterworks! "'GOLSWORTHY.--This is to inform you that you and your waterworks being the pest of the City of Exeter, not only by taking the bread out of the mouths of the poor watermen, but by your overbearance and pride, this is to inform you that if you do not destroy that vile machine of yours, in 9 days, it shall be burnt to the ground; and, further, if you neglect this notice, you shall not only have your property burnt, but a mark shall be made of your body. "'From your deadly enemy, "'SWING. "'Neglect not this, or you will know the weight of lead.'" Cobbett's lectures and writings undoubtedly influenced the minds of the ignorant agricultural labourer, and one man, under sentence of death for incendiarism at Battle, wrote the following confession:-- "I, Thomas Goodman, once herd of one Mr. Cobbit going a Bout gaveing out lactuers; at length he came to Battel and gave one their, and there was a gret number of Peopel came to hear him and i went: he had A verry long conversation concerning the states of the country, and telling them that they war verrey much impose upon, and he said he would show them the way to gain their rights and liberals, and he said it would be very Proper for every man to keep gun in his house, espesely young men, and that they might prepare themselves in readyness to go with him when he called on them, and he would show them wich way to go on, and he said the peopel might expect fire as well as other places.--this is the truth and nothing But the truth of A deying man. "THOMAS GOODMAN."