![William Hodgson, The Case of William Hodgson, Now Confined in Newgate, for the Payment of Two Hundred Pounds, After having Suffered Two Years’ Imprisonment on a Charge of Sedition, Considered and Compared with the Existing Laws of the Country (London: Daniel Isaac Eaton;
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John Smith, [1796]).
2](https://images.tandf.co.uk/common/jackets/crclarge/978135122/9781351221429.jpg "William Hodgson, The Case of William Hodgson, Now Confined in Newgate, for the Payment of Two Hundred Pounds, After having Suffered Two Years’ Imprisonment on a Charge of Sedition, Considered and Compared with the Existing Laws of the Country (London: Daniel Isaac Eaton;
1
John Smith, [1796]).
2")
ABSTRACT
The Case of William Hodgson represents a body of middle-class prison protest literature that linked individual cases of abuse of the legal and penal systems to general political principles rooted in the philosophy of the French, Scottish, English and other Enlightenments of the eighteenth century. In prison, Hodgson wrote a political manifesto, The Commonwealth of Reason, connected by language and broad political principles to this personal account exemplifying what reformers considered to be the oppressive and corrupt existing system, symbolized by Newgate. On his release, like many erstwhile political agitators Hodgson turned to promoting the public good through information and education, as a writer and publisher. In England a solemn engagement takes place between the Executive Power and the People, on every renewal of the person who fills the kingly office; which, in the understanding of English jurisprudence, never dies.
