he truth is, the fees are so very low, when any are due, and so much is
done for nothing, that, if a single justice of peace had business enough
to employ twenty clerks, neither he nor they would get much by their
labor.]

The public will not, therefore, I hope, think I betray a secret when I
inform them that I received from the Government a yearly pension out
of the public service money; which, I believe, indeed, would have been
larger had my great patron been convinced of an error, which I have
heard him utter more than once, that he could not indeed say that
the acting as a principal justice of peace in Westminster was on all
accounts very desirable, but that all the world knew it was a very
lucrative office. Now, to have shown him plainly that a man must be a
rogue to make a very little this way, and that he could not make much
by being as great a rogue as he could be, would have required more
confidence than, I believe, he had in me, and more of his conversation
than he chose to allow me; I therefore resigned the office and
the farther execution of my plan to my brother, who had long been
my assistant. And now, lest the case between me and the reader should
be the same in both instances as it was between me and the great man, I
will not add another word on the subject.

But, not to trouble the reader with anecdotes, contrary to my own rule
laid down in my preface, I assure him I thought my family was very
slenderly provided for; and that my health began to decline so fast that
I had very little more of life left to accomplish what I had thought of
too late. I rejoiced therefore greatly in seeing an opportunity, as I
apprehended, of gaining such merit in the eye of the public, that, if my
life were the sacrifice to it, my friends might think they did a popular
act in putting my family at least beyond the reach of necessity, which I
myself began to despair of doing. And though I disclaim all pretense to
that Spartan or Roman patriotism which loved the public so well that it
was always ready to become a voluntary sacrifice to the public good, I
do solemnly declare I have that love for my family.

After this confession therefore, that the public was not the principal
deity to which my life was offered a sacrifice, and when it is farther
considered what a poor sacrifice this was, being indeed no other than
the giving up what I saw little likelihood of being able to hold much
longer, and which, upon the terms I held