The causes of the failure of _The Liberal_ were very complex, but quite obvious. There was no definite political campaign mapped out, no proportion outlined for the various departments, no assignments of individual responsibility, no attempt to cater to the public appetite or to mollify the public prejudices for expediency's sake, and an utter want of harmony among its supporters. Each contributor rode his own hobby. Each vented his private spleen without regard to the common good. It was a vague, up-in-the-air scheme, wholly lacking in coördination and common sense. Byron's fickleness and want of genuine interest in a small affair among many other greater ones; the disappointment of both Byron[415] and Hunt in not realizing the enormous profits that they had looked forward to--although Hunt wrote later that the "moderate profits" were quite enough to have encouraged perseverance on the part of Byron; Hunt's ill-health and unhappy situation which rendered it difficult for him to write; John Hunt's inexperience as a bookseller; the general unpopularity of the editor, the publisher, and the contributors; and last, the pent-up storm of rage from the press which greeted the first number of _The Liberal_,[416] were other reasons that contributed to its ultimate downfall. In seeking Hunt for the editor of such a venture, as Gait had pointed out,[417] Byron had mistaken his political notoriety for solid literary reputation.
Hunt, notwithstanding his confession[418] of an inability to write at his best and of his brother's inexperience, throws the burden of failure solely on Byron. He asserts that _The Liberal_ had no enemies and, worst of all, that Byron when he foresaw hostility and failure, gave him and his brother the profits that they might carry the responsibility of an "ominous partnership"[419]--a statement ungenerously distorted by bitter memories, for when John Hunt was prosecuted for the publication of the _Vision of Judgment_, Byron offered to stand trial in his stead. Neither does Hunt state that Byron's contributions were _gratis_ and that the "moderate profits" enabled him and his brother to pay off some of their old debts.[420] Byron, strong with the prescience of failure, likewise shifted the blame to other shoulders and with the aid of a strong imagination tried to persuade himself and his friends that the Hunts had projected the affair and that he had consented in an evil hour to engage in it;[421] that they were the cause of the failure; that his motives throughout had been philanthropic only in nature;[422] and that he was sacrificing himself for others. Such statements are inventions born of self-accusation and of self-defense. The worst that can be said of Byron from beginning to end of the affair is that he was not conscientious in his endeavors to make the journal a success; that, after it failed, he evaded financial responsibility by placing barriers of coldness and ungraciousness between Hunt and himself.