the country, who had been an active leader of the people in promoting
petitions for Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, and Vote by
Ballot; and he avowed the dread of a dungeon to be the cause of his
leaving the country! As he had never communicated the slightest hint to
me of his intention, so he never made the slightest allusion to me
in his leave-taking address, any more than as if he never had such a
friend. This, at the moment, I considered as most unkind, unfeeling, and
treacherous. But, upon reflection, I esteem it the highest compliment
that he could have paid me; for it clearly proves that he knew the
honesty of my nature too well, to expect that I should have ever
sanctioned so dastardly, so thoroughly unmanly a proceeding as that of
flying from my country, and abandoning the Reformers to the uncontrolled
malice of their enemies, and that, too, at such a moment of difficulty
and danger.

Yet, doubly wounded as I was by the conduct of Mr. Cobbett, wounded
both personally and as a friend of the people, I, nevertheless, soon
endeavoured to find at least some excuse for him, and I made up my mind
not to act the same part towards him which he had done towards me. Real
friendship is not easily alienated from its object. On the very first
opportunity, therefore, I rode over to Botley, to make inquiries about
his circumstances, and, if possible, to serve my friend, notwithstanding
his desertion of me. I found that Mr. Tunno, the mortgagee, had taken
possession of his estate, and that the landlord of the farm which he
occupied, and of the house in which he had lived, had seized for rent;
and, as might naturally be expected under such circumstances, every
thing was going, or rather gone, to rack; all his family had abandoned
the place, and were in London. I called upon the only person in Botley
that used to be intimate with him, from whom I received such an account
as made me form a worse opinion of mankind than I had ever before