wind of treason. The prisoner, too, had sheltered his brother's emissary, the Irish Presbyterian minister Jackson; had corresponded with Jackson in Ireland, signing his name backwards way (Enots), and had forwarded to the Government garbled extracts from his brother's letters; but Lord Lauderdale, Sheridan, and William Smith, M.P., testified that he was merely a weak enthusiast, anxious to give himself airs, yet sincerely desirous of a peace with France. Rogers, called as a witness for the prosecution, and asked as to the prisoner's loyalty to the King and regard for his country, evasively answered that he had always thought him a well-meaning man, and he was not pressed to say more. The prisoner was acquitted, and, after a fortnight's detention for debt, retired to France, where he became steward to an Englishman named Parker, at Villeneuve St. George.
J. H. Stone would scarcely have been acquitted, for in a document read at the trial he spoke through- out of the French as "we," and of the English as "you," thus identifying himself, as Chief Justice Kenyon remarked, with France. In a published letter to Dr. Priestley, he made some caustic comments on the prosecution, incidentally extolled the Girondins, and declared his dissent from Paine's religious views and his belief in an enlightened Christianity. In November 1796 he confirmed a report that Dr. Priestley intended to settle in France. Priestley, he said, would have made France his home
