As a way of making a living he sold the writings of parliamentary reformers such as Tom Paine on the streets of London, often walking "thirty miles for a profit of eighteen pence". In April 1817 he formed a publishing business with the printer William Sherwin and rented a shop in Fleet Street. To make political texts such as Paine's books "The Rights of Man" and the "Principles of Government" available to the poor he split them into sections which he sold as small pamphlets, similarly publishing "The Age of Reason" and "Principles of Nature". He issued unauthorized copies of Southey's "Wat Tyler" and after the radical William Hone's arrest in May, he reissued the parody of parts of the "Book of Common Prayer" for which Hone was to be tried, then was himself arrested in August and held without charge until Hone was acquitted in December.