Excerpt from An Appeal to Facts: In a Letter to the Right Hon. Earl Temple

I shall likewise add a Word or two on the Tax that has been laid upon Cyder, and submit the Whole to your Review, which, I know, will be exceedingly cool, and no less candid.

Before I enter upon the Subject, give me leave to make one Remark, which I recommend, with some Earnestness, to your Lordship's Attention, and that of my Countrymen. I have lived under several Administrations of Government, and I assure you, that the most effectual, nay the severest, Way of exposing them, was by a fair Relation of what they did: - Facts are with some Difficulty explained away, and this they and their Friends were so sensible of, that, in all their Replies and Rejoinders, they either denied those Facts entirely, or exaggerated or diminished them, as either best suited the Purpose. By this Touch-stone, therefore, the only one that can distinguish Gold from every baser Metal, I intend to try the late Ministry, or rather, as I think all our Friends would wish, the late Minister. This will be doing the Thing with full Effect. And here, my Lord, I cannot help wishing that those two egregious Writers, so well known to the World by their serupulous Adherence to Truth, to Decency, and good Manners, so generally applauded for the Knowledge and Practice of every religious and moral Duty, who have far outgone the Pryns and Lilburns of former Ages, I could have wished that they had taken this better Method. It is true, they have exposed the greatest Names, for they are no Respecters of Persons, (and they have a Warrant for it in a Book, which both of them extremely reverence, ) to the Mirth and Diversion of the Rabble. Nor do I blame a Manner, which must have its Merit, with so gentle and delicate a Humanity, as your Lordship is known eminently to possess, and which has deserved (so themselves assure us) the Encouragement of your Patronage, and the Assistance of your Purse. I honor your Lordship so truly, that I cannot wish either more properly or nobly employed. Those Gentlemen, besides, by turning over Ainsworth's Dictonary, where I believe almost every abusive Epithet in the English Language may be found, have strung a proper Number of them together, and then, after finding out such Names as well-meaning but ignorant Men are apt to hold in some Veneration, have prefixed or added them to those Names, as their true and undeniable Character. Now and then, indeed, a fair Man has been called black, a tall Man shrunk into a Dwarf, but the indulgent Publick, satisfied of their virtuous Intentions on the Whole, have easily passed over such mere Slips of the Pen Neither do I mean, that they should change their Manner, even in such Trifles, for the future: God forbid! Their Papers would not live a Day after.

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