s said to have retorted upon some one who had
boasted that English courts of justice were open to all classes: 'So is
the London tavern--to all who can pay.'[139] That is in the spirit of
Bentham; and yet Bentham complains that Horne Tooke's disciple, Burdett,
believed in the common law, and revered the authority of Coke.[140] In
brief, the creed of Horne Tooke meant 'liberty' founded upon tradition.
I shall presently notice the consistency of this with what may be called
his philosophy. Meanwhile it was only natural that radicals of this
variety should retire from active politics, having sufficiently burnt
their fingers by flirtation with the more thoroughgoing party. How they
came to life again will appear hereafter. Horne Tooke himself took
warning from his narrow escape. He stayed quietly in his house at
Wimbledon.[141] There he divided his time between his books and his
garden, and received his friends to Sunday dinners. Bentham, Mackintosh,
Coleridge, and Godwin were among his visitors. Coleridge calls him a
'keen iron man,' and reports that he made a butt of Godwin as he had
done of Paine.[142] Porson and Boswell encountered him in drinking
matches and were both left under the table.[143] The house was thus a
small centre of intellectual life, though the symposia were not
altogether such as became philosophers. Horne Tooke was a keen and
shrewd disputant, well able to impress weaker natures. His neighbour,
Sir Francis Burdett, became his political disciple, and in later years
was accepted as the radical leader. Tooke died at Wimbledon 18th March
1812.

NOTES:

[126] _France_, p. 206 (20th July 1789).

[127] See the _Life of Horne Tooke_, by Alexander Stephens (2 vols. 8vo,
1813). John Horne added the name Tooke in 1782.

[128] _Parl. Hist._ xxxi. 751.

[129] The history of these societies may be found in the trials reported
in the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth volumes of
Cobbett's _State Trials_, and in the reports of the secret committees in
the thirty-first and thirty-fourth volumes of the _Parl. History_. There
are materials in Place's papers in the British Museum which have been
used in E. Smith's _English Jacobins_.

[130] _Parl. Hist._ xxix. 1300-1341.

[131] _Parl. Hist._ xxxiv. 574-655.

[132] Mr. Wallas's _Life of Place_, p. 25 _n._

[133] _State Trials_, xxiv. 575.

[134] _Ibid._ xxv. 330.

[135] _Ibid._ xxv. 390.

[136] Paul's _Godwin_, i. 147.

[137] Stephens, ii. 48,