Hays's first independent publication, Cursory Remarks on an Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship (1791), appeared under her pseudonym “Eusebia”. It defended Dissenting modes of worship against the attack made by Gilbert Wakefield. Wakefield had argued that Dissenters placed excessive emphasis on the sociable aspects of churchgoing. Hays countered that most worshippers were unsuited to the discipline of private religious contemplation. Though not persuaded from his original position, Wakefield included praise of Hays's reasoning and compositional style in a subsequent edition of his publication.

In 1792 Hays's friend George Dyer gave her a copy of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of

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