Here are your books and very ashamed I am that they have been kept so long. They were mislaid having been tied up to be sent home to you and by mistake put on a shelf and were always looked at in that state as another parcel, while I have been fidgetted to death by your notes supposing the books were stolen I could not tell how.

However I console you a little perhaps for the disappointment by sending you a volume of Cobbet's RegisterUntil he fled the country in 1817, William Cobbett was the writer and publisher of the influential weekly newspaper, the . He was acquainted with Hone, though Hone did not hold Cobbett in very high esteem. John Bone was Hone's early business partner. [return] which John Bone had and you will perhaps accept [one word] on Public Credit as a sort of propitiation for my offence. I remember some years ago I thought it contained valuable knowledge.