Guardian,’ remained to the last his principal achievement.
In 1832 Hetherington was imprisoned for six months in Clerkenwell gaol, and a second time for six months for issuing his newspaper in defiance of the law, but the regular issue of the ‘Guardian’ was not affected. Hetherington's was by no means a profitable business. He had to leave his shop disguised and return to it disguised—sometimes as a quaker, a waggoner, or a costermonger. After one of his flights he returned to London to see his dying mother, when a Bow Street runner seized him as he was knocking at the door. To distribute his paper dummy parcels were sent off in one direction by persons instructed to make all resistance they could to constables who seized them; in the meantime real parcels were sent by another road. His shopmen were imprisoned, his premises entered, his property taken, and men brought into the house by constables, who broke up with blacksmiths' hammers his press and his type. Hetherington started a new weekly paper called ‘The Destructive and Poor Man's Conservative’ on 2 Feb. 1833. The ‘Conservative,’ as his new venture was jocularly called, was a journal in defence of trades unions. The ‘Guardian’ was still appearing, and for the publication of that journal and of the ‘Conservative’ he was indicted anew in 1834. The case came for trial before Lord Lyndhurst. Hetherington defended himself with force and relevance. The verdict was for the crown on the ‘Conservative,’ and the penalties were 120l. On the ‘Poor Man's Guardian,’ Hetherington was acquitted. At last No. 159 of the ‘Poor Man's Guardian’ bore these words: ‘This paper, after sustaining a persecution of three years and a half duration, in which upwards of five hundred persons were imprisoned for vending it, was declared in the Court of Exchequer to be a strictly legal publication.’ Politics were henceforth free, but news unstamped remained illegal, and the taxes on the press, in addition to the stamp, were still serious. Hetherington stated to the jury ‘he paid 500l. a year duty on the paper he consumed.’
In Dec. 1840 Hetherington was indicted for publishing ‘Haslam's Letters to the Clergy of all Denominations,’ whose arguments were mainly directed against passages which the writer thought cruel or immoral in the Old Testament. Hetherington defended himself, and Lord Denman, who was judge, spoke of his defence ‘as one to which he had listened with feelings of great interest and sentiments of respect too.’ Mr. Justice Talfourd afterwards said that ‘Hetherington conducted his defence with great propriety and talent.’ Sentence was deferred, but he was ultimately imprisoned for four months. Acting on the advice of Francis Place, Hetherington, to ascertain whether the law had an equal application to gentlemen and workmen, indicted Moxon, the publisher of Shelley's works, for blasphemy in June 1841. Serjeant Talfourd, who was engaged for the defence of Moxon, contended that there ‘must be some alteration of the law, or some restriction of the right to put it in action,’ but Moxon was found guilty. Hetherington was not less active in trades unionism and in chartism. Besides drawing up the ‘Circular for the Formation of Trades Unions,’ he sat in chartist conventions. He died at 57 Judd Street, London, on 24 Aug. 1849, of cholera, through trusting to his temperance, and not accepting aid in time. At his burial at Kensal Green two thousand persons were present, his friend G. J. Holyoake delivering his funeral oration from the tomb of Captain Williams, the ‘Publicola’ of the ‘Weekly Dispatch,’ who had defended Hetherington with his pen. Hetherington was ready of speech, with an honest voice, disinterested earnestness, strong common sense, and indignation without anger, which he owed to discipleship of Robert Owen.
[Trial of H. Hetherington before Lord Denman, 1840; G. J. Holyoake's Life of Henry Hetherington, 1849; Reasoner, vol. vii. 1849; G. J. Holyoake's Last Trial by Jury, 1878; Poor Man's Guardian, 1834–5.]
HETHERINGTON, WILLIAM MAXWELL (1803–1885), Scottish poet and divine, was born 4 June 1803 in the parish of Troqueer, on the opposite bank of the Nith from Dumfries. Receiving a parish school education, he was bred a gardener, but entered the university of Edinburgh in 1822, and became a distinguished student. Before completing his studies for the church he published, in 1829, 'Twelve Dramatic Sketches' founded on the Pastoral Poetry of Scotland,' being faithful delineations of scenery and manners familiar to the author, interspersed with graceful and melodious lyrics. Hetherington became minister of Torphichen, Linlithgow, in 1836; in 1843 he adhered to the free church, and in 1844 was appointed to a charge in St. Andrews; he became minister of Free St. Paul's, Edinburgh, in 1848; and was appointed professor of apologetics and systematic theology in New College, Glasgow, in 1857. He died 23 May 1865. In 1836 he married Jennie, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Meek of Hamilton.
Besides his poems Hetherington published: 1. 'The Ministers Family,' 1838, a popular evangelicail work. 2. 'History of the Church of Scotland from the Introduction of Christianity to the Period of the Disruption,
