"let us hear what it is." Adams proceeded as follows:--"Mr. Hunt went
down to Glastonbury, and under a threat of compelling all his tenants to
pay their rent in specie, he induced them to advance him three years'
rent, for which he gave them receipts. But, no sooner had they paid
him their rent, than the mortgagee came, and made them all pay it over
again, so that all his tenants were paying double rents." "Well," said
Cobbett, "if this be true, it is a very dishonourable act; but, as I
have ascertained that the last story you told me, about his having
turned his wife out of doors to starve, without making her any
allowance, is a fiction, or, to speak plainly, I have ascertained it to
be a most scandalous and wicked falsehood, you must excuse me if I do
not believe one word of this affair, about his tenants, till you bring
me some better proof than your bare assertion." At length, Adams
confessed that he was only told so by a person with whom he met at
Bristol fair. The fact was, that Mr. Haine had related the circumstance
at Bristol amongst his friends, just as it happened; Adams heard of
it, and out of such slender materials, he manufactured as base and as
unfounded a lie as ever defiled the lips of an inhabitant of Drury-Lane
or St. Giles's. Mr. Cobbett saw at once through the villainy of this Mr.
Currier Adams, and he always afterwards treated him; as he deserved,
with merited contempt. This Adams is the person who, in the Court of
King's Bench, upon the trial of "Wright _versus_ Cobbett," for a libel,
(if Wright's and the other reports are true,) swore that he had several
times assisted in turning Hunt out of the room at public meetings. This
is a most bare-faced falsehood as ever was stated in a court of justice;
and Mr. Cobbett, who knew that it was false, should have indicted the
fellow for perjury. No human being ever laid hands upon me in the whole
course of my life, to turn me out of a room, either public or private,
with the exception of the ruffians who endeavoured to drive me and my
friends out of the theatre at Manchester, in the year 1818. The very