orribly magnified _upon paper_.
Consider how many disputes have arisen in the world, in which both
parties were so violent in what they believed to be the support of
truth, and which to the public, and indeed to themselves a few years
afterwards, appeared unwise, because the occasion or cause of it was not
worth contending about. Consider that you are, all of you, men who can
depend upon each other's probity and honour, and where these essentials
are not wanting, surely in mere matters of business the rest may be
palliated by mutual bearance and forbearance. Besides, you are so
connected by various publications, your common property, and some of
them such as will remain so until the termination of your lives, that
you cannot effect an entire disunion, and must therefore be subject to
eternal vexations and regrets which will embitter every transaction and
settlement between you.

You know, moreover, that it is one of the misfortunes of our nature,
that disputes are always the most bitter in proportion to former
intimacy. And how much dissatisfaction will it occasion if either of you
are desirous in a year or two of renewing that intimacy which you are
now so anxious to dissolve--to say nothing of your relative utility to
each other--a circumstance which is never properly estimated, except
when the want of the means reminds us of what we have been at such pains
to deprive ourselves. Pause, my dear sirs, whilst to choose be yet in
your power; show yourselves superior to common prejudice, and by an
immediate exercise of your acknowledged pre-eminence of intellect,
suffer arrangements to be made for an accommodation and for a renewal of
that connexion which has heretofore been productive of honour and
profit. I am sure I have to apologize for having ventured to say so much
to men so much my superiors in sense and knowledge of the world and
their own interest; but sometimes the meanest bystander may perceive
disadvantages in the movements of the most skilful players.

You will not, I am sure, attribute anything which I have said to an
insensibility to the immediate advantages which will arise to myself
from a determination opposite to that which I have taken the liberty of
suggesting. It arises from a very different feeling. I should be very
little worthy of your great confidence and attention to my interest upon
this occasion, if I did not state freely the result of my humble
consideration of this matter; and having done so