THE of these papers to dedicate them to your Majefty, is, the greatness of the fubject on which they treat, and the manifest tendency they have to promote those principles of liberty which your Majesty, as a Briton, and as a King who glories in that name, has ever encouraged and maintained. The dedicating to your Majesty a work fo particularly defigned, as the following papers evidently are, to fupport the principles of freedom and the spirit of a free constitution, cannot, it is presumed, fail to be acceptable; and the more so, as these papers breathe throughout a just sense of, and a fincere respect for, the honour and dignity of your Majefty's perfon and government. Animated with the fpirit of an Englishman, the author has dared to cenfure or approve fuch measures just as they have either deserved the contempt or approbation of the people in general. He has ventured to affert the rights of an English subject, and to lay before the eyes of the whole nation, the actions of a fet of minifters totally lost to all sense of the public good, grasping after private interest and emolument, threatening destruction and slavery to the state, and glorying in the fubverfion of all legal government. He laments, with a juft indignation, over the . many attempts which have been made to deceive your Majesty; to drefs out falfhood in the garb of truth; and to alienate that affection which ever has, and ever will fubfift between your Majesty and the people. He has exclaimed against fuch proceedings as unconstitutional, base, and infidious; and has endeavoured, at the fame time (by holding up their actions to public view) to reclaim them from their wicked courses, and to shame them into the performance of those duties of their station, which they have so long most unaccountably neglected. He 30000000 80000000 He has taken every legal measure, both in his public and private capacity, to fupport the rights of a free-born people. He is now fuffering under the most tedious and harsh confinement, as a man steady and immovable in the cause of liberty. In all these different characters he has paid to your Majesty that respect and duty, which becomes an honeft, well-meaning, and loyal fubject. Under his prefent afflicting circumstances he ftill remains, with the fame warm zeal, a wellwisher to your Majesty and to the good of his country, unfupported by place, pension, or any emolument whatever. It has ever been his ambition to bring to strict justice those enemies of the constitution, who have employed every wicked and deteftable practice to inflave and oppress your people. He has, of confequence, been the object of their revenge, and the victim of their violence and arbirary power; and for many years has been reprefented to your Majefty as difaffected and even rebellious. The |