Indeed I have a particular Reason for acting in this cautious Manner; seeing that I have suffered already by making a Slip in an Affair of this Nature, which in any other Cause or Controversy, would have been reckoned to be a very _venial_ one. The Case was this: In the First Edition of my Fourth Tract, I had accused Dr. FRANKLIN with having acted a very disingenuous Part, in opposing and denying the Authority of the _British_ Parliament, to lay a Tax [the Stamp-Duty] on _America_, when he himself had solicited to be employed as an Agent in the Collection of that very Tax. In Letters which passed between us, he denied the Charge, asserting first, that he did not make Interest for a Place in the Stamp-Office, 'till the Bill was passed into a Law;--And 2dly. that the Place, for which he asked, was not for himself, but for a Friend, one Mr. HUGHES, who was accordingly appointed by Mr. GRENVILLE. Now in Consequence of this Information, I omitted in the next Edition, the whole Paragraph, and said nothing, either _pro_, or _con_, particularly relative to Dr. FRANKLIN. And surely, every Thing considered, and the _faux pas_ of Dr. FRANKLIN concerning the _stolen_ Papers of Mr. WHEATLEY duly weighed, one would have thought, that I had made Satisfaction fully sufficient to almost any Man in such a Case, whose Pretensions to _nice_ Honour might have been much better founded than those of Dr. FRANKLIN. But it seems, I was mistaken: For before he left _England_, I was called on in Print, to make Reparation to his much injured Character: And in his Absence, his Agents and Confederates, the Monthly Reviewers, have done the same. Here therefore, I appeal to the Public, whether I have not advanced as far already in this Affair, as there was need for me to have done, supposing even (which is supposing a great deal) that every Thing which Dr. FRANKLIN said was strictly true: For granting that he did not solicit for that Place in particular, yet it is a most undeniable Fact, that at the very Instant when he was declaiming at the Bar of the House of Commons, against the Authority of Parliament, he himself was an _American_ Revenue Officer, in a very lucrative Post, created by parliamentary Authority: He was a Post-Master General in _North-America_; and the Tax, which he collected, and for which he was accountable, was an _internal_, as well as _external_ Tax. So that in short, in every, or in any Light, his Conduct was not of the spotless Kind; nor was my Accusation of Disingenuity against him the less true, whether he had solicited a Place in the Stamp-Office, or not.