wrote, being unsigned and published in papers and periodicals, has been
lost.

He was always on the alert in political matters, ready to seize every
opportunity to do good and to promote the cause of freedom. He was, in a
word, one of that large army of pilgrims whose ambition is to "make
whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks straight." In 1791 he wrote an
anonymous letter to Fox, in which he advanced the sentiments to which he
later gave expression in his "Political Justice," his principal work. In
his autobiographical notes he explains:--

"Mr. Fox, in the debate on the bill for giving a new constitution
to Canada, had said that he would not be the man to propose the
abolition of a House of Lords in a country where such a power was
already established; but as little would he be the man to recommend
the introduction of such a power where it was not. This was by no
means the only public indication he had shown how deeply he had
drank of the spirit of the French Revolution. The object of the
above-mentioned letters [that is, his own to Fox, and one written
by Holcroft to Sheridan] was to excite these two illustrious men to
persevere gravely and inflexibly in the career on which they had
entered. I was strongly impressed with the sentiment that in the
then existing circumstances of England and of Europe, great and
happy improvements might be achieved under such auspices without
anarchy and confusion. I believed that important changes must
arise, and I was inexpressibly anxious that such changes should be
effected under the conduct of the best and most competent leaders."

This brief note explains at once the two leading doctrines of his
philosophy: the necessity of change, and the equal importance of
moderation in effecting it. His political creed was, paradoxical as this
may seem, the outcome of his religious education. He had long since given
up the actual faith in which he was born and trained; after going through
successive stages of Sandemanianism, Deism, and Socinianism, he had, in
1787, become a "complete unbeliever;" but he never entirely outlived its
influence. This was of a twofold nature. It taught him to question the
sanctity of established institutions, and it crushed in him, even if it
did not wholly eradicate, strong passion and emotional demonstration. No
man in England was as thorough a radical as he. Paine's or Holcroft's
co