ABSTRACT
207Godwin’s “Fleetwood” I had not read, but had read several of his other works as they came out, indicative of great power and imagination. I am and ever was, of his opinion that the vox populi is not the vox Dei. I am of those who believe that nine times out of ten going with the crowd is to “go with the multitude to do evil.” If the multitude is ever right it is upon plain matters of feeling in which the promptings of simple nature come to the rescue. I would go any length in favour of rational liberty, and have consistently in my humble way again and again suffered for the stern conviction of that truth, and now pay for it in the age that has brought no compensation. In religion, in politics, in the arts— science is beyond the attempt of the multitude to comprehend—the many are right or wrong, by chance. Long years afterwards William Curran who was very intimate with Godwin wished me to meet him. The opportunity thus afforded was a mere accident. I knew his daughter too, who became Mrs. Shelley, and had a great respect for her, as a lady of very superior talents. The fearless and independent sentiments of Godwin had marked him out for the axe and embowelling, under the arguments used 208by Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, and the ministry in 1794. England had nearly reflected the scenes of blood that were acted on the other side of the channel, in the death of men for advocating the crime of parliamentary reform against the combination of European despotisms. Where are those despotisms? Can the differences of a few years make real demerit venial? Can it extinguish truth? Has not that parliamentary reform since placed the sovereignty of England on a rock, from which it sees the wreck of holy alliances, and the like tyrannies scattered to the winds?
“Bowed their stiff necks, laden with stormy blasts,
Or torn up sheer!—”
