be lost.—I therefore set about collecting my scattered facts.—I undertook this task at a time when my official duty pressed hard on me, and bad health made me very unfit for study.—The effects of this must appear in many faults, which I see, without being able at present to amend them. I owe this apology to the public, and I trust that my good intentions will procure it acceptance10.
Nothing would give me more sincere pleasure than to see the whole proved to be a mistake;—to be convinced that there is no such plot, and that we run no risk of the contagion; but that Britain will continue, by the abiding prevalence of honour, of virtue, and of true religion, to exhibit the fairest specimen of civil government that ever was seen on earth, and a national character and conduct not unworthy of the inestimable blessings that we enjoy.
Our excellent Sovereign, at his accession to the throne, declared to his Parliament that he gloried in having been born a Briton.—Would to God that all and each of his subjects had entertained the same lofty notions of this good fortune!
Then would they have laboured, as he has done for near forty years, to support the honour of the British name by setting as bright an example of domestic and of public virtue.—Then would Britons have been indeed the boast of humanity—then we should have viewed these wicked plots of our neighbours with a smile of contempt, and of sincere pity—and there would have been no need of this imperfect but well-meant performance.