so far as I could find means to trace it. Calumniators of all factions, have therefore exerted their powers, and some have formed themselves into a regular junto, for the purpose of putting every engine in motion to hurt the reputation of my history, and for the forwarding of that object they even deal their slanders against my private character. If I should think proper to lay before the public the characters of some of these gentry, particularly those of some yeomen officers, their power of calumniation might be sufficiently circumscribed; but I choose to rest my book and character solely on their own merits. Integrity will be its own shield. Truth will find its way. My book is in the hands of the public, and any person of common sense has a right to form a judgment of it, who reads the whole with attention, instead of relying on the garbled representations of others. My character is known to several respectable persons; and of my loyalty I have given full proof in the knowledge of men of honourable rank and reputation, whom I could call as witnesses, if I had occasion. I shall leave these counterfeit loyalists the pleasure of knawing the file till they wear their teeth. Thanks to the genius of British domination, and extensive reason, these virulent animalcula are at length deprived of their sting and power of mischief. The evil has worked its cure, and law and reason are now that animalcula

too strong to be disturbed, or at all affected, by the noisy senseless jargon of these would-be

statesmen.

”

By counterfeit loyalists, I mean men who make unnecessary professions of a violent zeal for the established government and protestant religion, and at the same time speak and act as if they wished to render both of these odious to as many people as possible, and thus, by augmenting the number and rancour of enemies to these establishments, promote, as far as in their power, the preparative works of revolution.

A gentleman whom I regard in a superior light to that of a counterfeit loyalist, being asked, while he was declaiming against my book, whether the accounts were false which gave him offence? answered, "No; but they are such as "a loyalist, particularly a protestant clergyman, "ought not to have published." This I conceive to be the general opinion. A history may be written, provided that no error committed by any actor on the right side of the question, or in favour of the righteous cause, shall be recorded. To this the opposite party will give their full assent, provided that theirs shall be acknowledged to be the righteous cause. Roman catholics are as highly incensed against me, as the irrationally zealous protestants. Yet how could they expect a heretic priest to write partially in favour of the true believers? With this partiality,

however, I am charged as a crime by over-zealous protestants, while with an opposite partiality I am charged as a crime by Roman catholics. Each party has determined to discourage, as far as possible, the sale of the book, as a hostile publication; and yet it has had a sale, caused, I believe, by the yelping of certain curs, who barked from a dark abode through a filthy channel, and the big-bou-wou of a huge-mastiff, who made his appearance in clear sunshine. These barkings and bou-wous made a noise, which in-. duced many individuals to break through the rules of their party for the gratification of their private curiosity. I therefore return thanks to my advertisers.

By the rage of party, or the influence of power, has the truth of history in all ages been distorted, obscured, or lost in oblivion; few men having courage to publish any thing disagreeable to the ruling faction, whose reign of terror may continue until the facts be forgotten, or unsupported by evidence. Thus the most obscure period of the English history, since the Norman conquest, is that of the war between the roses, including the reigns of Edward the fourth and Richard the third. Fictions, recorded as facts by the most esteemed historians of that period, and believed without scrutiny through a series of generations, are detected by the contradiction of official registries, by inconsistency, or by their

absurdity; while to supply the vacuum we have only reasoning and conjecture. That Richard the third was a monster of dissimulation, treachery, and cruelty, with a hideous distortion of body conformable to the qualities of his mind'; what writer would have dared to deny in the despotic reigns of Henry the seventh, and his successors till the death of Elizabeth?-When, under the protection of a most liberal and benign government, which disdains to coalesce with petty factions, a writer, totally unconnected with catholics or croppies of any religion, either by consanguity or affinity, who had in the hour of danger strained every nerve for the support of the existing constitution, who might be supposed in some degree shielded by the sanctity of his character, as a minister of the established church, with, I hope, a corresponding moral conduct, is furiously persecuted by factious protestants in various ways, and repeatedly threatened with personal violence, because he would not condescend to be the venal historian- of a party.

Toenumerate the objections of Roman catholics would give myself and the reader unnecessary trouble. One is, that I have called them Romanists. As I seldom dispute about articulate sounds, or sounds of any kind, I shall call them here Catholics. Another is that I have expressed an approbation of Sir Richard Musgrave's work, Leaving his

other excellencies to the sagacity of other critics, I have only commended his zeal and industry. The former, I hope, will be allowed by catholics themselves, after due perusal of his quarto; and of the latter, I think, his volume is a weighty (I do not say heavy) proof. I apprehend that it is already beginning to sink by its own weight into oblivion. Another is that I have apologised for orange-men, and that I consequently must be an orange-man myself. I certainly never have been, nor ever intend to be, an orange-man, since, having eight times taken the oath of allegiance, and being fully sensible that the support of my family depended on the continuance of the established government, I could not conceive any mode by which I could be more firmly attached to it; but I have been repeatedly assured by several orange-men, of undoubted veracity, and by my own sons, who are. orange-men, that their system is purely defensive, and that to give even the smallest insult to any person on account of a difference in religion is contrary to their oaths. I mean not to palliate the excesses of the lower or higher orders of orange-men, more than of any other denominations of men. Those among them who have infringed the laws of heaven and of their country, must be regarded as degrading the majesty of the monarch, and the sanctity of the religion which they have pretended to maintain. Another