r,
or the least favourable word of the persons, the designs, or friends of
the pretender. If they can do it, let them stand forth and speak; no
doubt but that they may be heard; and I, for my part, will relinquish
all pleas, pardons, and defences, and cast myself into the hands of
justice. Nay, to go further, I defy them to prove that I ever kept
company, or had any society, friendship, or conversation, with any
jacobite. So averse have I been to the interest and the people, that I
have studiously avoided their company on all occasions.

As nothing in the world has been more my aversion than the society of
jacobites, so nothing can be a greater misfortune to me than to be
accused and publicly reproached with what is, of all things in the
world, most abhorred by me; and that which has made it the more
afflicting is, that this charge arises from those very things which I
did with the sincerest design to manifest the contrary.

But such is my present fate, and I am to submit to it; which I do with
meekness and calmness, as to a judgment from heaven, and am practising
that duty which I have studied long ago, of forgiving my enemies, and
praying for them that despitefully use me.

Having given this brief history of the pardon, &c., I hope the impartial
part of the world will grant me, that being thus graciously delivered a
second time from the cruelty of my implacable enemies, and the ruin of a
cruel and unjust persecution, and that by the mere clemency and
goodness, my obligation to her majesty's goodness was far from being
made less than it was before.

I have now run through the history of my obligation to her majesty, and
to the person of my benefactor aforesaid. I shall state everything that
followed this with all the clearness I can, and leave myself liable to
as little cavil as I may; for I see myself assaulted by a sort of people
who will do me no justice. I hear a great noise made of punishing those
that are guilty, but, as I said before, not one word of clearing those
that are innocent; and I must say, in this part they treat me, not only
as I were no Christian, but as if they themselves were not Christians.
They will neither prove the charge nor hear the defence, which is the
unjustest thing in the world.

I foresee what will be alleged to the clause of my obligation, &c., to
great persons, and I resolve to give my adversaries all the advantage
they can desire by acknowledging beforehand, that no obligation t