In point of fact, few prisoners were ever so blessed as Cobbett. The reader is familiar enough (from the pages of “Advice,” &c.) with the current of domestic joy that kept flowing. But, besides having one or other of his family continually with him, there were always sympathizing visitors: personal friends, business acquaintances, deputations from clubs and societies all over the kingdom. And, what was of no little importance, Matthew Wood was sheriff, who attended, in every possible way, to the comfort of his prisoner. Baron Maseres[4] came frequently, and “always in his wig and gown, in order, as he said, to show his abhorrence of the sentence.” “I was hardly arrived when the brave old Major Cartwright came.… You [PETER WALKER, of Worth, Sussex] were the next to arrive; and when, by dint of money, I had obtained the favour to be put into a room by myself, you hurried home, and brought me bedstead, chairs, tables, bedding, and everything; and I think I see you now, stripped in your shirt, putting the bedstead together and making up my bed. During the whole of the two years you never suffered me to be lonely; and your kindness was such, that when you found me engaged--when any one arrived--you instantly departed, unless pressed to stay. Thus proving that your visits arose solely from your desire to alleviate the sufferings of confinement. And, at the close of the period, though the sum was so enormous, and the period so long, you, with my excellent friend BROWN, voluntarily became my bail, and spoke of it, as he did, as an honour done to yourself.” And, as to his health, Cobbett would boast in after years that he never had even a headache for a moment; never enjoyed better health or spirits; never had hopes more lively, or thoughts more gay, than in that prison. But that which, above all other matters, appeared to be the great solace of his prison-life, was the production of his famous work on the Currency, under the title of “Paper against Gold.”[5] The tricks and contrivances by which paper-money had been, along with the funding system, made the means of placing unwieldy fortunes in the hands of speculators, was his utter abhorrence. The glory was departed from England, in his eyes, if public credit were to hang upon the prosperity of the few, as against the multitude. And, regarding a fictitious currency, shifting in value from day to day, sometimes even from hour to hour, as a leading cause of the debt which was accumulating to such a terrible figure,--he resolved to devote a part of his newly-found leisure to the systematizing of his thought upon the subject. Accordingly, upon the 1st of September, he commenced a series of papers, founded upon the recent report of the Bullion Committee; tracing the history of the National Debt, and of the schemes for raising money which had been in vogue during the war.