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.

* * * * *

[Transcriber's Notes:

The transcriber made these changes to the text to correct obvious
errors:

1. p. 10, Jacobities --> Jacobites
2. p. 12, lordtreasurer --> lord treasurer
3. p. 20, an as unchristian --> as an unchr