from the bible alone. When ten years of age young Hone was sent to London to an attorney's office, and was influenced by the democratic principles of the London Corresponding Society. His father removed him in consequence to the office of another attorney at Chatham. Here he remained two years and a half, and returned to London as clerk to a Mr. Egerton in Gray's Inn. He left the law, and, having married in July 1800, began business as a print and book seller in Lambeth Walk. Afterwards he removed to St. Martin's Churchyard, where he suffered losses from fire.
At the time of the invasion alarm he was a member of the Prince of Wales's volunteer corps. In 1806 he published Shaw's ‘Gardener,’ and with his friend John Bone established an institution, styled ‘Tranquillity,’ in Albion Street, Blackfriars Bridge, combining the features of a savings bank, insurance office, and registry office. Sir William Stirling and other persons of substance acted as trustees, but, like Hone's other philanthropic and commercial schemes, the bank soon failed. A partnership with Bone as a bookselling firm was also unsuccessful. Hone became bankrupt, but again started business in May's Buildings, St. Martin's Lane, and High Street, Bloomsbury, where he compiled the index to an edition of Berners's ‘Froissart.’ On the retirement of John Walker, he was chosen by the booksellers in 1811 as trade auctioneer, and had a counting-house in Ivy Lane. He still paid more attention to public than to personal affairs—lunatic asylums now chiefly occupied him—and he failed a second time. With a family of seven children he lived in humble lodgings in the Old Bailey, and supported them by stray contributions to the ‘Critical Review’ and the ‘British Lady's Magazine.’ He took a small shop at 55 Fleet Street, and was twice robbed. In 1815 he published the ‘Traveller’ newspaper, wherein he defended Elizabeth Fenning [q. v.] He was a witness at inquests held on two persons shot during the Corn Bill riots on 7 March before the house of Mr. Robinson, in Old Burlington Street, and published reports of both inquests.
On 1 Feb. 1817 he commenced the ‘Reformer's Register,’ a weekly periodical, which the cares of ‘a little business and a large family’ prevented him from carrying beyond 25 Oct. In the same year he began to write and publish small satirical pieces directed against the government. Among them were ‘The late John Wilkes's Catechism,’ ‘The Sinecurist's Creed,’ and ‘The Political Litany,’ with cuts by Cruikshank, and parodying the litany, Athanasian creed, and the church catechism. For these he was prosecuted by the attorney-general, was brought to trial (17–19 Dec.) on three separate charges, and acquitted on them all. On the trials on the second and third charges Ellenborough presided. ‘The popular opinion was that Lord Ellenborough was killed by Hone's trial, and he certainly never held up his head in public after’ (Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices, iii. 225). The courage, learning, and mental vigour displayed by Hone in his three speeches in his own defence excited much public sympathy for him. A public meeting was held at the London Tavern 29 Dec. for the promotion of a subscription (see Trial by Jury and Liberty of the Press, 1818), and ultimately a sum of over 3,000l. was collected. Hone was thus able to move from the Old Bailey to a large shop at 45 Ludgate Hill.
Cruikshank etched several caricatures on the result of the trial, as well as a series of reduced copies of some engravings by Gillray, which Hone intended to publish in a work justifying his parodies. The connection between Hone and Cruikshank began in 1815, and for the next twenty-seven years the two remained firm friends. Cruikshank considered that the ‘great event of his artistic life’ was the Bank Restriction Note, 1820, designed by him, but possibly suggested by Hone. In 1819 Hone wrote his well-known ‘Political House that Jack Built,’ which soon ran through fifty-four editions. Numerous imitations were published, among them ‘The Dorchester Guide, or a House that Jack Built,’ the ‘Royalist's House,’ the ‘Financial House,’ and many others. The extraordinary popularity of the ‘Political House’ was largely owing to the forcible woodcuts of Cruikshank, who adorned in the same style Hone's other squibs on the regent and his domestic troubles. ‘A Slap at Slop’ (1820) was a burlesque on the ‘New Times’ newspaper, ridiculing Dr. Stoddart and the Constitutional Association. Hone was attacked in some verses in his own style, entitled ‘Slop's Shave at a Broken Hone.’ He issued a ‘Catalogue of Ancient and Modern Books’ on sale at Ludgate Hill, including trials, engraved portraits, and a few oil-paintings. He was the publisher of cheap popular reprints at 6d., known as ‘Hone's editions.’ On the occasion of the illuminations, 11 to 15 Nov. 1820, ‘to celebrate the victory obtained by the press for the liberties of the people, which had been assailed in the person of the queen,’ Cruikshank painted for Hone's shop-front a transparency, engraved in the ‘Political Showman.’ Hone an-
