s. On an annuity he
would have thriven as an antiquarian writer and collector. It is well that
the attack upon the right to ridicule Ministers roused a dormant power
which was equal to the occasion. Hone declared, on his honor, that he had
never addressed a meeting in his life, nor spoken a word before more than
twelve persons. Had he--which however could not then be done--employed
counsel and had a _guilty defense_ made for him, he would very likely have
been convicted, and the work would have been left to be done by another. No
question that the parodies disgusted all who reverenced Christianity, and
who could not separate the serious and the ludicrous, and prevent their
existence in combination.

My extracts, etc., are from the nineteenth, seventeenth, and sixteenth
editions of the three trials, which seem to have been contemporaneous (all
in 1818) as they are made up into one book, with additional title over all,
and the motto "Thrice the brindled cat hath mew'd." They are published by
Hone himself, who I should have said was a publisher {185} as well as was
to be. And though the trials only ended Dec. 20, 1817, the preface attached
to this common title is dated Jan. 23, 1818.[413]

The spirit which was roused against the false dealing of the Government,
i.e., the pretense of prosecuting for impiety when all the world knew the
real offense was, if anything, sedition--was not got up at the moment:
there had been previous exhibitions of it. For example, in the spring of
1818 Mr. Russell, a little printer in Birmingham, was indicted for
publishing the Political Litany[414] on which Hone was afterwards tried. He
took his witnesses to the summer Warwick assizes, and was told that the
indictment had been removed by certiorari into the King's Bench. He had
notice of trial for the spring assizes at Warwick: he took his witnesses
there, and the trial was postponed by the Crown. He then had notice for the
summer assizes at Warwick; and so on. The policy seems to have been to wear
out the obnoxious parties, either by delays or by heaping on trials. The
Government was odious, and knew it could _not_ get verdicts against
ridicule, and _could_ get verdicts against impiety. No difficulty was found
in convicting the sellers of Paine's works, and the like. When Hone was
held to bail it was seen that a crisis was at hand. All parties in politics
furnished him with parodies in proof of religious persons having made
instruments of them