ABSTRACT
First printed in The Examiner, II, 3 December 1809, pp. 771–2. The Hunts again became the object of a libel charge at the end of the year, this time for claiming that George III’s successor ‘will have the finest opportunity of becoming nobly popular’ (see headnote above, p. 112). This occurred amidst a spate of ex officio charges for seditious libel by the Attorney General. For example, the government also brought charges against Cobbett for a piece on military flogging, which ended with his imprisonment, and against the proprietors of the Morning Chronicle for reprinting Hunt’s ‘offensive’ words; after the case against the Chronicle resulted in a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict on 24 February 1810, the charges against the Hunts were dropped (see The Morning Chronicle, 26 February 1810 and The Examiner, III, 4 March 1810, pp. 129–31; 11 March 1810, pp. 145–7; also headnote below, pp. 150–1). See also Autobiography, vol. ii, pp. 66–8 and Stout, pp. 12–14.
