Since contemporary social conditions played an important part in the relations of Leigh Hunt with Byron, Shelley, and Keats, a brief survey of the period in question is necessary to an understanding of the forces at play on their intellect and conduct. The English mind had been admirably prepared for the principles of the French Revolution by the progressive tendency since the Revolution of 1688. The new order promised by France was acclaimed in England as one destined to right the wrongs of humanity; through unending progress mankind was to attain unlimited perfection. Upon such a prospect both parties were agreed, and the warnings of Burke were vain when Pitt, rationalizing, led the Tories, and Fox, rhapsodizing, led the Whigs. In 1793, Godwin's _Political Justice_, with its anarchistic doctrines of individual perfectibility and of individual self-reliance, rallied more recruits to the standard of liberty, though his theories of community of property and annulment of the marriage bond were somewhat charily received. The early writings of Wordsworth, Southey and Coleridge were colored with enthusiasm for the new movement. The agitation and the enactment of reform measures made actual advances towards the expected millennium. But the excesses of the Revolutionary regime in France bred in England, ever inclined to order, an opposition in many conservative minds that resulted in positive panic at the menace to state and church and property. The reaction swung the pendulum far in the opposite direction from justice and philanthropy. The first two decades of the new century continued to suffer from a counter-reform movement when the actual fright had subsided. During that period, anything which savored of reform was labelled as seditious. At the very beginning of this reaction William Pitt's efforts for the extension of the franchise were summarily put an end to, and the House of Commons remained as little representative of the English people as formerly. Catholics and Non-Conformists were denied, from the period of the union of Ireland with England in 1800 until 1829, the right to vote and to hold office. Pitt's efforts to frustrate such discrimination in Ireland were as unavailing as in his own country, for the prejudices and obstinacy of George III, in both instances, neutralized the good intentions of the liberal Ministry. The corrupt influence of the Crown in Parliament was undiminished except by the disfranchisement of persons holding contracts from the crown and of incumbents of revenue offices. The wars with America and with France greatly increased the public debt, threatened the national credit and burdened with taxes an already overburdened people. Oppressive industrial conditions made the life of the masses still more unendurable. The rise of manufacturing and the consequent adoption of inventions that dispensed with much hand labor decreased the number of the employed and reduced wages, while the enormous