There is no official record of this occurring either in newspapers, parliamentary records, or in the minutes of the Privy Council. The entry corroborates Mary Shelley's story that Political Justice only escaped prosecution because of its relatively high price. Godwin liked to tell how Pitt personally told the Council that 'a three guinea book could never do much harm among those who had not three shillings to spare' (although the first edition of Political Justice in fact sold for one pound sixteen shillings).

See Charles Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries (London: Henry S. King, 1876), I, p. 80 and St Clair, p. 85.