A second lasting and disastrous result that followed Hunt's incarceration and that greatly affected his relations with Byron and Shelley was the crippling of his finances. While it cannot be said that he ever showed any real business ability, yet, at the beginning of the trials for libel, his money matters were in fair condition. The heavy fine and costs permanently disabled him. In 1821 his affairs were in such a bad state that, with the hope of bettering them, he left England on a precarious journalistic venture, an injudicious step, the cause of which can be traced to the lingering effects of his labors in the cause of liberalism. From 1834 to 1840 his misfortunes reached a climax. He sold his books to get something to eat. The pain of giving up his beloved _Parnaso Italiano_ was like that of a violinist parting with his instrument. He lived in continual fear of arrest for debt. At the same time, family troubles and ill-health combined to torment him.
In 1844 Sir Percy Shelley gave him an annuity of £120, and in 1847, the same year of the benefit performance of _Every Man in His Humour_, he was granted through the efforts of Lord John Russell, Macaulay and Carlyle, an annual pension of £200 on the Civil List. There were also two separate grants of £200 each from the Royal Bounty, one from William IV, and the other from Queen Victoria. In his last years there is no mention made of want.[9]
Hunt's attitude in respect to money obligations was unique, but well-defined and consistent. It was not, as is often inferred, either puling or unscrupulous.[10] He was absolutely incapable of the Skimpole vices.[11] His dilemmas were not due to indolence. On the contrary, he labored indefatigably as results show. The trouble was his "hugger-mugger" management, as Carlyle expressed it. He adopted William Godwin's doctrine that the distribution of property should depend on justice and necessity, and thought with him that the teachers of religion were pernicious in treating the practice of justice "not as a debt, but as an affair of spontaneous generosity and bounty. They have called upon the rich to be clement and merciful to the poor. The consequence of this has been that the rich, when they bestowed the slender pittance of their enormous wealth in acts of charity, as they were called, took merit to themselves for what they gave, instead of considering themselves delinquents for what they withheld."[12] Godwin held gratitude to be a superstition.