The most discussed question regarding Byron's motives in inviting Hunt is the extent of his relation to _The Examiner_ at that time, and Byron's knowledge of it. Trelawny states that when Byron "_consented_ to join Leigh Hunt and others in writing for the 'Liberal,' I think his principal inducement was in the belief that John and Leigh Hunt were proprietors of the 'Examiner';--so when Leigh Hunt at Pisa told him that he was no longer connected with that paper, Byron was taken aback, finding that Hunt would be entirely dependent upon the success of their hazardous project, while he himself would be deprived of that on which he had set his heart,--the use of a weekly paper in great circulation."[346] Moore heard indirectly in 1821 that Byron, Shelley and Hunt were to "_conspire_ together" in _The Examiner_[347]--a plan nowhere mentioned in the writings of the three men concerned and most unlikely. What Trelawney "thought" conflicts with what Moore "heard." The suggestions of both are open to doubt. Byron was most assuredly the projector of _The Liberal_ and did not "_consent_ to join Leigh Hunt and others." Besides, granting that Trelawney's opinion was based on a statement of Byron's, even that would not be convincing, since Byron made a number of mis-statements about the matter after he grew weary of it. Questionable as the assertion is, it has been made the basis of accusations against Hunt of deliberate deceit and of breach of contract. Had it been true that there was an understanding of cooeperation between the two papers, Byron and Moore would have made much of the charge. Trelawney's opinion, first noticed by _Blackwood's_ in March, 1828, has been elaborated by Jeaffreson,[348] and accepted by Leslie Stephen[349] and Kent.[350] Elze, who seems to have labored under the impression that Harold Skimpole was a faithful portraiture of Hunt, states that his connection with Byron began with a falsehood.[351] R. B. Johnson says, in defense of Hunt, that the accusation "is quite unreasonable and contrary to all the evidence."[352] Monkhouse thinks that it is doubtful if Byron reckoned on the support of the London paper.[353] J. Ashcroft Noble says that Byron had much to say about the Hunts in his letters, "and made the most of all kinds of trivial or imaginary grievances; it is simply incredible that had a grievance of such reality and magnitude as this really existed he would have refrained from mentioning it." As proof against it, he quotes Byron's belief in Hunt's honesty as late as September 1822; and he points out the "obvious absurdity of the idea that in the year 1822 a weekly newspaper could be conducted successfully, or at all, by an editor in Pisa or Genoa."[354] The strong probability, gathered from all the extant evidence, is that Byron and Shelley, in inviting Hunt to Italy, expected, and very naturally, that he would continue to share in the profits of _The Examiner_. Shelley, indeed, in a letter dated as late