William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt was born on the 10^th April 1778, in the decade of the American Revolution, and he died in 1830, just before the first Reform Bill. He was born in Maidstone, Kent, the third son of the Reverend William Hazlitt (1737-1820), a Presbyterian minister who embraced rational dissent. The elder Hazlitt loved to dispute scriptural texts and championed civil and religious liberty – even at the risk of his family’s security, for it is likely his liberal sympathies were partly responsible for their removal in 1780 from Maidstone to Bandon in county Cork, Ireland. At his new ministry he became embroiled in a controversy concerning the brutal treatment of American prisoners of war by the British. He prevailed, but