I have
all my life hated those treacherous expedients called MEZZO-
TERMINI, and it is possible with this disposition I might have
endured more patiently an absolute privation of liberty than the
more modified restrictions to which my residence in the Sanctuary
at this period subjected me. If, however, the feelings I then
experienced were to increase in intensity according to the
difference between a jail and my actual condition, I must have
hanged myself, or pined to death--there could have been no other
alternative.
Amongst many companions who forgot and neglected me, of course,
when my difficulties seemed to be inextricable, I had one true
friend; and that friend was a barrister, who knew the laws of his
country well, and tracing them up to the spirit of equity and
justice in which they originate, had repeatedly prevented, by his
benevolent and manly exertions, the triumphs of selfish cunning
over simplicity and folly. He undertook my cause, with the
assistance of a solicitor of a character similar to his own. My
quondam doer had ensconced himself chin-deep among legal
trenches, hornworks, and covered ways; but my two protectors
shelled him out of his defences, and I was at length a free man,
at liberty to go or stay wheresoever my mind listed.
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