ABSTRACT
Robert Blakey (1795–1878), a largely self-educated man, was born at Morpeth in Northumberland, the son of an artisan. In 1831 he published Treatise on the Divine and Human Wills, and this was followed in 1833 by his History of Moral Science. At the start of 1838, Blakey bought the Newcastle Liberator, a local radical paper which two years later was amalgamated with the Champion, a London weekly paper previously edited by John Thelwall, under the title of the Northern Liberator and Champion. This chapter presents an extract from Blakey’s posthumously published Memoirs that describes one of several visits to Godwin during a trip to London in the early 1830s. Blakey’s portrayal of Godwin’s intellectual vigour and verbal sharpness provides a contrast to other presentations of the revolutionary philosopher in old age by politically unsympathetic visitors, who emphasise his apparent mental slowness and declining conversational powers.
