"A long and violent abuse of power is generally the means of calling the right of it in question (and in matters, too, which might never have been thought of had not the sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry), and as the king of England hath undertaken, in his _own right_, to support the parliament in what he calls _theirs_, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpations of either. "In the following sheets the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise and the worthy need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments are injudicious or unfriendly will cease of themselves, unless too much pains is bestowed upon their conversion." "When kings and ministers are forgotten, when the force and direction of personal satire is no longer understood, and when measures are only felt in their remotest consequences, this book will, I believe, be found to contain principles worthy to be transmitted to posterity. When you leave the unimpaired, hereditary freehold to your children, you do but half your duty. Both liberty and property are precarious, unless the possessors have sense and spirit enough to defend them. "Be assured that the laws which protect us in our civil rights, grow out of the constitution, and they must fall or flourish with it. This is not the cause of faction or of party, or of any individual, but the common interest of every man in Britain. Although the king should continue to support his present system of government, the period is not very distant at which you will have the means of redress in your own power; it may be nearer, perhaps, than any of us expect; and I would warn you to be prepared for it...." "The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which, their affections are interested. The laying a country desolate with fire and sword, declaring war against the natural rights of mankind, and extirpating the defenders thereof from the face of the earth, is the concern of every man to whom nature hath given the power of feeling; of which class, regardless of party censure, is THE AUTHOR."