A Letter to John Wilkes, Esq; Sheriff of London and Middlesex: In Which the Extortion and Oppression of Sheriffs Officers, With Many Other Alarming Abuses, Are Exemplified and Detected; and a Remedy Proposed — John Shaqi
A Letter to John Wilkes, Esq; Sheriff of London and Middlesex: In Which the Extortion and Oppression of Sheriffs Officers, With Many Other Alarming Abuses, Are Exemplified and Detected; and a Remedy ProposedHolloway, Robert, active 1771-1808
History
A Letter to John Wilkes, Esq; Sheriff of London and Middlesex: In Which the Extortion and Oppression of Sheriffs Officers, With Many Other Alarming Abuses, Are Exemplified and Detected; and a Remedy Proposed
Holloway, Robert, active 1771-1808
Crime; Extortion; Freedom; Sheriffs
THERE is an innate satisfaction in human nature that will ever manifest
itself when occasion presents the tribute of praise to our actions, and a
generous mind feels an equal degree of pleasure in paying that tribute in
the coin of truth; but the ambiguity of your actions renders their
construction so doubtful, there is much hazard in giving or denying them
approbation. Whilst the boisterous malevolence of your enemies load you
with vices foreign to your heart, the fanatic adulation of your zealots
as fervently extol you for virtues WE know not of. Opinions
diametrically opposite in general are but hyperboles created and
cherished by the violence of party, and at best leave an hypothesis too
intricate to draw any conclusion of real principles or motives from. It
is therefore not altogether unpardonable if a writer should err in the
portrait of a character so equivocal. In two things however the people
of all degrees, interest, and principles seem to concur; namely, that the
advantage derived from your conduct has heretofore been merely
accidental, and that if your integrity could keep pace with your
abilities, this nation might justly boast an ornament unknown to others;
whether either or both these conjectures bear the testimony of truth your
own heart can best determine; nevertheless it is indisputably evident
that we have not witnessed one premeditated or intentional benefit,
independent of your own personal and private interest, flowing from a
course of eight years patriotism; how far your endeavours may have fell
short of your assiduity and inclination in the pursuit of any public
good, I will not contest. The multitude have long been taught to
consider you as an oracle pregnant with miracles eventually as their
different imaginations represented them; as yet those sanguine
expectations are totally unanswered: it is therefore absolutely necessary
to do something either to SERVE or DECEIVE, no matter which. Credulity
is the characteristic of Englishmen, who as greedily swallow the
deception as the service. They have entertained a most sovereign respect
for the hacknied and prostituted word LIBERTY, without a comprehension of
any property or meaning peculiar to that admirable substantive more than
the bare found; to evince this truth we need only look back and view the
innumerable stabs given to the vitals of Liberty in those very moments
they meant to celebrate her triumph over Tyranny. The seizure of your
person and papers with a general warrant furnished us with one instance
of ministerial oppression, or rather ministerial ignorance; to remedy
which we have seen the misguided advocates of Liberty committing every
species of violence without any warrant at all, spurning the authority of
magistrates, and attempting a total subversion of that order and
government so absolutely necessary to GENUINE LIBERTY, the certain
effects of a bigoted enthusiasm. Liberty in itself is the balm of life
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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