and
company, or whatever other "infamous wretches and execrable villains"
you mean, to take their vengeance only on your own sacred ministerial
person, without bringing any of your brethren, much less the most remote
branch of the Royal Family, into the debate. This generous offer I
suspected from the first; because there were never heard of so many, so
unnecessary, and so severe prosecutions as you have promoted during your
ministry, in a kingdom where the liberty of the press is so much
pretended to be allowed. But in reading a page or two, I found you
thought it proper to explain away your grant; for there you tell us,
that "these miscreants" (meaning the writers against you) "are to
remember that the laws have ABUNDANTLY LESS generous, less mild
and merciful sentiments" than yourself, and into their secular hands the
poor authors must be delivered to fines, prisons, pillories, whippings,
and the gallows. Thus your promise of impunity, which began somewhat
jesuitically, concludes with the mercy of a Spanish inquisitor.

If it should so happen that I am neither "abettor, patron, protector,"
nor "supporter" of these imaginary invectives "against the King, her
Majesty, or any of the Royal Family," I desire to know what
satisfaction I am to get from you, or the creature you employed in
writing the libel which I am now answering? It will be no excuse to
say, that I differ from you in every particular of your political
reason and practise; because that will be to load the best, the
soundest, and most numerous part of the kingdom with the denominations
you are pleased to bestow upon me, that they are "Jacobites, wicked
miscreants, infamous wretches, execrable villains, and defamers of the
King, Queen, and all the Royal Family," and "guilty of high treason."
You cannot know my style; but I can easily know your works, which are
performed in the sight of the sun. Your good inclinations are
visible; but I begin to doubt the strength of your credit, even at
court, that you have not power to make his Majesty believe me the
person which you represent in your libel: as most infallibly you have
often attempted, and in vain, because I must otherwise have found it
by the marks of his royal displeasure. However, to be angry with you
to whom I am indebted for the greatest obligation I could possibly
receive, would be the highest ingratitude. It is to YOU I owe that
reputation I have acquired for some years past of being a lover of my