ABSTRACT
An old antagonist of his—a man who was in a state of antagonism to much that is in the world—William Godwin died in April, 1836. Godwin was a man of great powers, insufficiently balanced; and, as the European world was, in his youth, a mighty conflict of great powers insufficiently balanced, he was just the man to make an impression of vast force on the society of his day. Soon after his Political Justice was published, working men were seen to club their earnings to buy it, and to meet under a tree or in an alehouse to read it. There can be no doubt that government and society in England are the better for the astuteness and the audacity, the truth and the error, the depth and the shallows, the generosity and the injustice, of Godwin, as manifested in his Political Justice.
