As to the great odium that I have incurred, the charge of _sedition_, or my being an enemy to the constitution or peace of my country, is a mere pretence for it; though it has been so much urged, that it is now generally believed, and all attempts to undeceive the public with respect to it avail nothing at all. The whole course of my studies, from early life, shews how little _politics_ of any kind have been my object. Indeed to have written so much as I have in _theology_, and to have done so much in _experimental philosophy_, and at the same time to have had my mind occupied, as it is supposed to have been, with factious politics, I must have had faculties more than human. Let any person only cast his eye over the long list of my publications, and he will see that they relate almost wholly to theology, philosophy, or general literature. I did, however, when I was a younger man, and before it was in my power to give much attention to philosophical pursuits, write a small anonymous political pamphlet, on the _State of Liberty in this Country_, about the time of Mr. Wilkes’s election for Middlesex, which gained me the acquaintance, and I may say the friendship, of Sir George Savile, and which I had the happiness to enjoy as long as he lived. At the request also of Dr. Franklin and Dr. Fothergill, I wrote an address to the Dissenters on the subject of the approaching rupture with America, a pamphlet which Sir George Savile, and my other friends, circulated in great numbers, and it was thought with some effect. After this I entirely ceased to write any thing on the subject of politics, except as far as the business of the _Test Act_, and of _Civil Establishments of Religion_, had a connection with politics. And though, at the recommendation of Dr. Price, I was presently after this taken into the family of the Marquis of Landsdowne, and I entered into almost all his views, as thinking them just and liberal, I never wrote a single political pamphlet, or even a paragraph in a newspaper, all the time that I was with him, which was seven years. I never preached a political sermon in my life; unless such as, I believe all Dissenters usually preach on the fifth of November, in favour of _civil and religious liberty_, may be said to be political. And on these occasions, I am confident, that I never advanced any sentiment but such as, until of late years, would have tended to recommend, rather than render me obnoxious, to those who direct the administration of this country. And the doctrines which I adopted when young, and which were even popular then (except with the clergy, who were at that time generally disaffected to the family on the throne) I cannot abandon, merely because the times are so changed, that they are now become unpopular, and the expression and communication of them hazardous.