About this time I commenced a most intimate acquaintance and friendship with Robert Pollard, afterwards an engraver and printseller of eminence in London. He was bound apprentice to John Kirkup, a silversmith in Newcastle; and, from his being frequently sent to our workshop with crests, cyphers, &c., to engrave, he took a great liking to engraving, and was indefatigable in his endeavours to become master of it. In furtherance of this, we spent many of our evenings together at his father’s house, which to me was a kind of home. On his master declining business, my young friend was engaged for a term of years to learn engraving with Isaac Taylor, of Holborn, London.
In my frequent visits to the workshops of Gilbert Grey, and to that of his son William, I first fell in with Thomas Spence.[15] He was one of the warmest philanthropists in the world. The happiness of mankind seemed with him to absorb every other consideration. He was of a cheerful disposition, warm in his attachment to his friends, and in his patriotism to his country; but he was violent against people whom he considered of an opposite character. With such he kept no bounds. For the purpose chiefly of making converts to his opinion “that property in land is everyone’s right,” he got a number of young men gathered together, and formed into a debating society, which was held in the evenings in his school-room, in the Broad Garth, Newcastle. One night when his favourite question was to be debated, he reckoned upon me as one of his “backers.” In this, however, he was mistaken; for, notwithstanding my tacitly assenting in a certain degree to his plan,—viz., as to the probability of its succeeding in some uninhabited country or island,—I could not at all agree with him in thinking it right to upset the present state of society, by taking from people what is their own, and then launching out upon his speculations. I considered that property ought to be held sacred, and, besides, that the honestly obtaining of it was the great stimulant to industry, which kept all things in order, and society in full health and vigour. The question having been given against him without my having said a word in its defence, he became swollen with indignation, which, after the company was gone, he vented upon me. To reason with him was useless. He began by calling me—from my silence—“a Sir Walter Blackett;”[16] adding, “If I had been as stout as you are, I would have thrashed you, but there is another way in which I can do the business, and have at you.” He then produced a pair of cudgels, and to work we fell. He did not know that I was a proficient in cudgel playing, and I soon found that he was very defective. After I had blackened the insides of his thighs and arms, he became quite outrageous and acted very unfairly, which obliged me to give him a severe beating.