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I am unconcerned at the rage and clamour of party men; but I cannot be unconcerned to hear men, who I think are good men and good Christians, prepossessed and mistaken about me. However, I cannot doubt but some time or other it will please God to open such men’s eyes. A constant, steady adhering to personal virtue and to public peace, which, I thank God, I can appeal to him has always been my practice, will at last restore me to the opinion of sober and impartial men, and that is all I desire. What it will do with those who are resolutely partial and unjust, I cannot say, neither is that much my concern. But I cannot forbear giving one example of the hard treatment I receive, which has happened even while I am writing this tract. I have six children; I have educated them as well as my circumstances will permit, and so as I hope shall recommend them to better usage than their father meets with in this world.

I am not indebted one shilling in the world for any part of their education, or for anything else belonging to their bringing up; yet the author of the Flying Post published lately that I never paid for the education of any of my children. If any man in Britain has a shilling to demand of me for any part of their education, or anything belonging to them, let them come for it.

But these men care not what injurious things they write, nor what they say, whether truth or not, if it may but raise a reproach on me, though it were to be my ruin. I may well appeal to the honour and justice of my worst enemies in such cases as this:

Conscia mens recti fama mendacia ridet.

CONCLUSION BY THE PUBLISHER.

WHILE this was at the press, and the copy thus far finished, the author was seized with a violent fit of an apoplexy, whereby he was disabled finishing what he designed in his further defence; and continuing now for above six weeks in a weak and languishing condition, neither able to go on nor likely to recover, at least in any short time, his friends thought it not fit to delay the publication of this any longer. If he recovers he may be able to finish what he began; if not, it is the opinion of most that know him that the treatment which he here complains of, and some others that he would have spoken of, have been the apparent cause of his disaster.