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vi, 52 pp, without the half title. Disbound, several pages with upper blank margins moderately spotted. Good+. The publisher, Daniel Eaton, was arrested in December 1793 for publishing an alleged libel comparing King of England to a Game Cock. He was acquitted in early 1794. Pigott began his adult life as a "libertine gentleman, whose reformation took place amid the efflorescence of a short-lived culture of radicalism in the London of the 1790s, a change which signalled his involvement in an attempt to reform not only himself, but also the entire political order of British society" [Mee, Libertines and Radicals in the 1790s: The Strange Case of Charles Pigott. Pages 185-203 in Cryle, LIBERTINE ENLIGHTENMENT (Hampshire and NY: Palgrave Macmillan 2003)]. "Pigott was arrested after an incident at the New London coffee house involving the physician William Hodgson. The official indictment claimed that the two men began proposing republican toasts in their private box after a bout of drinking. The charge revolved around the accusation that Hodgson had denounced George III as a 'German hog butcher.' The proprietor of the coffee house sent for the constables. Hodgson and Pigott were arraigned for uttering seditious words. Early in October, Pigott's lawyer, John Martin, discovered mistakes in the warrant. Pigott also complained to the bench that the excessive amount of bail set contravened the Bill of Rights. A jury at the Old Bailey threw out the charges against Pigott on 2 November. While in confinement, Pigott wrote his defence, later published as Persecution. His account of his evening with Hodgson was of two friends indulging 'in that openness and freedom of discourse natural to persons, who harbour no criminal or secret intentions'. More generally, he staked his defence on Whig principles: 'freedom of speech is an english man's prerogative, engrafted on our Constitution, by magna charta and the bill of rights'." [Mee: Print, Publicity, and Popular Radicalism in the 1790s, pages 131-148. (Cambridge: 2016)]. FIRST EDITION. II Harv. Law Cat. 355. ESTC T43881. Seller Inventory # 39775
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