DEDICATION TO THE ENGLISH NATION. I DEDICATE to you a collection of letters, writ ten by one of yourselves for the common benefit of us all. They would never have grown to this size, without your continued encouragement and applause. To me they originally owe nothing but a healthy, sanguine consti tution. Under your care they have thriven. To you they are indebted for whatever strength or beauty they possess. When Kings and Ministers are forgotten, wher the force and direction of personal satire is no longer understood, and when measures are only felt in their remotest consequences, this book will, I believe, be found to contain principles worthy to be transmitted to posterity. When you leave the unimpaired hereditary freehold to your children, you do but half your duty. Both liberty and property are precarious, unless the possessors have sense and spirit enough to defend them. This is not the language of vanity. If I am a vain man, my gratification lies within a narrow circle. I am the sole depositary of my own secret, and it shall perish with me. If an honest, and I may truly affirm, a laborious zeal for the public service, has given me any weight in your esteem, let me exhort and conjure you never to suffer an invasion of your political constitution, however minute the instance may appear, to pass by, without a determined, persevering resistance. One precedent creates another. They soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was fact, to-day is doctrine. Examples are supposed to justify the most dangerous measures; and where they do not suit exactly, the defect is supplied by analogy. Be assured, that the laws which protect us in our civil rights, grow cut of the constitution, and the A |