use of to keep me from this meeting. As, however, I was never jealous of
any one myself, I had no suspicion that my friends were jealous of me,
and I took no notice of it, though I was sorry to find that to the
people who met on Portsdown, _no apology or explanation_ was made for my
absence, or at least for the meeting being held on the day that
I was at Spafields; and I have reason to think that the people of
Portsmouth, who first invited me, were very much disappointed at my not
being present, and that they felt themselves slighted by me, which,
I assure them, was the farthest thing in the world from my wish or
intention.

While my _friends_ were acting in this manner, my enemies were not idle,
and the agents of Government, in order to injure me in the opinion of
the public, not only vilified and abused and libelled me from day to
day, in the public newspapers, but they actually caused a placard to be
printed and posted all over the metropolis, which was headed "_Mr. Hunt
hissed out of the City of Bristol_," and contained all sorts of infamous
falsehoods and scurrilous abuse. It appeared from the newspapers that a
boy, of the name of Thomas Dugood, had been committed to prison, by a
Police Magistrate, for having pulled down one of these posting-bills. I
immediately set about an inquiry, to find out the poor boy, to endeavour
to relieve him from his imprisonment, and to gain him some redress for
the persecution which he had suffered. To discover where the boy was, I
went to the Police Office, and, after a great deal of shuffling, I was
directed to Coldbath-fields Prison, which, as I subsequently found, was
the wrong gaol, the boy having been committed to the New Prison. In the
mean time, however, finding that I was resolved to go to the bottom of
the business, they had released the boy. At length I found him out at
his lodgings, and learned from him that he had been confined for several
days among the vilest felons. I took him to the Police Office, to