is to have every libel, every pamphlet, be
it ever so foolish, so malicious, so unmannerly, or so dangerous, be
laid at my door, and be called publicly by my name. It has been in vain
for me to struggle with this injury; it has been in vain for me to
protest, to declare solemnly, nay, if I would have sworn that I had no
hand in such a book or paper, never saw it, never read it, and the like,
it was the same thing.

My name has been hackneyed about the street by the hawkers, and about
the coffeehouses by the politicians, at such a rate as no patience could
bear. One man will swear to the style; another to this or that
expression; another to the way of printing; and all so positive that it
is to no purpose to oppose it.

I published once, to stop this way of using me, that I would print
nothing but what I set my name to, and held it for a year or two; but it
was all one; I had the same treatment. I now have resolved for some time
to write nothing at all, and yet I find it the same thing; two books
lately published being called mine, for no other reason that I know of
than that at the request of the printer, I revised two sheets of them at
the press, and that they seemed to be written in favour of a certain
person; which person, also, as I have been assured, had no hand in them,
or any knowledge of them, till they were published in print.

This is a flail which I have no fence against, but to complain of the
injustice of it, and that is but _the shortest way_ to be treated with
more injustice.

There is a mighty charge against me for being author and publisher of a
paper called the 'Mercator.' I will state the fact first, and then speak
to the subject.

It is true, that being desired to give my opinion in the affair of the
commerce with France, I did, as I often had done in print many years
before, declare that it was my opinion we ought to have an open trade
with France, because I did believe we might have the advantage by such a
trade; and of this opinion I am still. What part I had in the Mercator
is well known; and could men answer with argument, and not with personal
abuse, I would at any time defend every part of the Mercator which was
of my doing. But to say the Mercator was mine, is false; I neither was
the author of it, had the property of it, the printing of it, or the
profit by it. I had never any payment or reward for writing any part of
it, nor had I the power to put what I would into it. Yet the whole