such that he conceived not only a dislike for oaths, but a rooted objection to commit himself even to a promise. Impey formed an attachment for him in spite of his eccentricities, but he insisted on having his indentures cancelled on the score of the scruples which he entertained about practising the profession. He was now for a time to become dependent wholly upon his pen. He had already written for the periodicals, and in 1787 he published ‘Poems upon various Subjects’ (London, 2 vols. 8vo) which was favourably noticed in the ‘Critical Review.’ About the same time he became editor of the ‘Biographical and Imperial Magazine,’ for which he received a salary of 50l. He made perhaps as much by contributions to other periodicals, and devoted half his income to the support of his mother, who had failed in her business.
Thelwall commenced his political career by speaking at the meetings of the society for free debate at the Coachmakers' Hall. In the course of the discussions in which he took part a number of radical views became grafted upon his original high tory doctrines, and when the States-General met at Versailles in 1789, he rapidly became ‘intoxicated with the French doctrines of the day.’ Though he suffered originally from a marked hesitation of speech and even a slight lisp, he gradually developed with the voice of a demagogue a genuine declamatory power. He made an impression at Coachmakers' Hall by an eloquent speech in which he opposed the compact formed by the rival parties to neutralise the voice of the Westminster electors in 1790. When it was determined to nominate an independent candidate, he was asked to act as a poll clerk, and he soon won the friendship of the veteran Horne Tooke when the latter resolved to contest the seat. Tooke so appreciated his talents that he offered to send him to the university and to use his influence to obtain his subsequent advancement in the church. But Thelwall had formed other plans for his future. His income was steadily increasing, and during the summer of 1791 he married and settled down near the Borough hospitals in order that he might attend the anatomical and medical lectures of Henry Cline [q. v.], William Babington [q. v.], and others. He was also a frequent attendant at the lecture-room of John Hunter. He joined the Physical Society at Guy's Hospital, and read before it ‘An Essay on Animal Vitality,’ which was much applauded (London, 1793, 8vo).
In the meantime the advanced opinions which Thelwall shared were rapidly spreading in London, and 1791 saw the formation of a number of Jacobin societies. Thelwall joined the Society of the Friends of the People, and he became a prominent member of the Corresponding Society founded by Thomas Hardy (1752–1832) [q. v.] in January 1792. One of ‘Citizen Thelwall's’ sallies at the Capel Court Society, in which he likened a crowned despot to a bantam cock on a dunghill, caught the radical taste of the day. When this rodomontade was reproduced with some embellishments in ‘Politics for the People, or Hogswash’ (No. 8; the second title was in reference to a contemptuous remark of Burke's upon the ‘swinish multitude’), the government precipitately caused the publisher, Daniel Isaac Eaton, to be indicted at the Old Bailey for a seditious libel; but, in spite of an adverse summing-up, the jury found the prisoner not guilty (24 Feb. 1794), and the prosecution was covered with ridicule owing to the grotesque manner in which the indictment was framed—the phrase ‘meaning our lord the king’ being interpolated at each of the most ludicrous passages in Thelwall's description. The affair gave him a certain notoriety, and he was marked down by the government spies. One of these, named Gostling, declared that Thelwall upon a public occasion cut the froth from a pot of porter and invoked a similar fate upon all kings. He was not finally arrested, however, until 13 May 1794, when he was charged upon the deposition of another spy, named Ward, with having moved a seditious resolution at a meeting at Chalk Farm. Six days later he was sent to the Tower along with Thomas Hardy and Horne Tooke, who had been arrested upon similar charges. On 6 Oct. true bills were found against them, and on 24 Oct. they were removed to Newgate. His trial was the last of the political trials of the year, being held on 1–5 Dec. at the Old Bailey before Chief-baron Macdonald. The testimony as to Thelwall's moral character was exceptionally strong, and his acquittal was the signal for a great outburst of applause. At the beginning of the trial he handed a pencilled note to counsel, saying he wished to plead his own cause. ‘If you do, you will be hanged,’ was Erskine's comment, to which he at once rejoined, ‘Then I'll be hanged if I do’ (Britton). Soon after his release he published ‘Poems written in Close Confinement in the Tower and Newgate’ (London, 1795, 4to). He was now living at Beaufort Buildings, Strand, and during 1795 his activity as a lecturer and political speaker was redoubled. When in December Pitt's act for more effectually preventing seditious
