DEDICATE to You a collection of

Letters, written by one of Yourselves for the common benefit of us all. They would never have grown to this fize, without your continued encouragement and applaufe. To me they owe nothing, but a healthy, fanguine conftitution. Under Your care they have thriven. To You they are indebted for whatever strength and beauty they poffefs. When Kings and Ministers are forgotten, when the VOL. I. force

a

force and direction of perfonal fatire is no longer understood, and when meafures are only felt in their remoteft confequences, this book will, I believe, be found to contain principles, worthy to be tranfmitted to pofterity. When You leave the unimpaired, hereditary freehold to Your children, You do but half Your duty. Both liberty and property are precarious, unless the poffeffors have sense. and spirit enough to defend them---This is not the language of vanity. If I am a vain man, my gratification lies within a narrow circle. I am the fole depofitary of my own fecret, and it fhall perish with

me.

If an honeft, and, I may truly affirm, a laborious zeal for the public fervice has given me any weight in Your esteem, let me exhort and conjure You never to suffer an invasion of your political conftitution, however minute the inftance

may

may appear, to pass by, without a determined, perfevering refiftance. One precedent creates another.---They foon accumulate, and conftitute law. What yesterday was fact, to-day, is doctrine. Examples are fuppofed to justify the most dangerous measures, and where they do not fuit exactly, the defect is fupplied by analogy.---Be affured that the laws, which protect Us in our civil rights, grow out of the conftitution, and that they must fall or flourish with it. This is not the cause of faction, or of party, of any individual, but the common interest of every man in Britain. Although the King fhould continue to support his present fyftem of government, the period is not very diftant, at which You will have the means of redress in your own power. It may be nearer perhaps than any of us expect, and I would warn You to be prepaired