"Have we been delivered from the curse of arbitrary power; have we been preserved from the destruction of the sword, the rage of fire, the scourge of pestilence, and the ghastly terrors of famine, to suffer by the mean artifices of money-changers? O my fellow citizens, you have joined with the spoilers; yet have you not added to your stores. Let me print the remembrance of your past inadvertency upon your hearts, that it may abide as a memorial to you and to your children; that deceivers may not hereafter inherit your possessions. And whereunto shall I liken our past inadvertency, that it may abide as a memorial to us and to our children? O my fellow-citizens, we have waged a civil war throughout the land; who hath not committed hostilities against his neighbour, and what hath it profited? The wealth, the inheritance of the Island, are transferred to the meanest of the people; those chiefly have gained who had nothing to lose: the nobility, the gentry, the merchants, have been a prey to the idle, the licentious, the spendthrifts; men whose habitations were not known. All the calamities have we felt of a civil war, bloodshed only excepted: they who abounded suffer want. The industry, the trade of the Nation, has been suspended, and even arts and sciences have languished in the general confusion: the very women have been exposed to plunder, whose condition is the more deplorable, because they are not acquainted with the methods of gain to repair their broken fortunes. Some are driven from their country, others forced into confinement, some are weary of life; and others there are who can neither be comforted nor recovered to the use of reason. Had his Majesty been present to see the wild proceedings of the people, his goodness would have saved us from these extremities; for though a King can, in his absence, delegate his power and authority, yet can he not delegate his wisdom and his justice."