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present, when difficulties appear on every side, deters many good men from adopting a vigorous and decisive conduct, left it might possibly lead to consequences different from their intentions. They dread left they might inflame, where their with was to tranquillize. This sentiment seems to have its principal weight among country gentlemen, who, from their situation, are most exposed to popular outrage: For this reason, also, I can easily foresee, that should this publication meet with any notice, it will incur the heavy censure of many, whose approbation, next to that of my own confidence, I moil value. Satisfied, however, with the purity of my motives, though this fear may mortify, it mull not deter me.—My own nearest and dearest friends are at this moment exposed to the attacks of the licentious populace, and surely I feel too melancholy a sense of their danger, not to look with horror on the barbarous rage which threatens them. I can with the truest sincerity aver, that if in the black host of calamities which gathers round us, there be one, which above all the rest confirms me in the sentiments I advance, it is the alarming and truly shocking situation of the respectable inhabitants in many of the country parts of this kingdom. It is because there appears to me too sufficient evidence, that their peace, their safety, their lives, are of less importance in the eyes of administration,
