selves? If I had gone round
to the citizens entitled to freedom, and squeezed them by the
hand,--"Sir, I humbly beg your vote,--I shall be eternally
thankful,--may I hope for the honor of your support?--Well!--come,--we
shall see you at the Council-House."--If I were then to deliver them to
my managers, pack them into tallies, vote them off in court, and when I
heard from the bar,--"Such a one only! and such a one forever!--he's my
man!"--"Thank you, good Sir,--Hah! my worthy friend! thank you
kindly,--that's an honest fellow,--how is your good family?"--Whilst
these words were hardly out of my mouth, if I should have wheeled round
at once, and told them,--"Get you gone, you pack of worthless fellows!
you have no votes,--you are usurpers! you are intruders on the rights of
real freemen! I will have nothing to do with you! you ought never to
have been produced at this election, and the sheriffs ought not to have
admitted you to poll!"--

Gentlemen, I should make a strange figure, if my conduct had been of
this sort. I am not so old an acquaintance of yours as the worthy
gentleman. Indeed, I could not have ventured on such kind of freedoms
with you. But I am bound, and I will endeavor, to have justice done to
the rights of freemen,--even though I should at the same time be obliged
to vindicate the former[17] part of my antagonist's conduct against his
own present inclinations.

I owe myself, in all things, to _all_ the freemen of this city. My
particular friends have a demand on mo that I should not deceive their
expectations. Never was cause or man supported with more constancy, more
activity, more spirit. I have been supported with a zeal, indeed, and
heartiness in my friends, which (if their object had been at all
proportioned to their endeavors) could never be sufficiently commended.
They supported me upon the most liberal principles. They wished that the
members for Bristol should be chosen for the city, and for their country
at large, and not for themselves.

So far they are not disappointed. If I possess nothing else, I am sure I
possess the temper that is fit for your service. I know nothing of
Bristol, but by the favors I have received, and the virtues I have seen
exerted in it.

I shall ever retain, what I now feel, the most perfect and grateful
attachment to my friends,--and I have no enmities, no resentments. I
never can consider fidelity to engagements and constancy in friendships
but with the highest ap