six months_ has induced me to become my own historian, and I will endeavour to be so faithfully; and I feel that I have need to put upon record all my good qualities, as a set-off to balance my bad qualities. Of the latter I have disclosed a great many already, and as I proceed I shall have to record still more. Now, as we are told that charity covers a multitude of sins, if I possess this good quality of charity, and if I prove that I always exercised it, I think I should not be doing common justice to myself or to my friends, if out of false modesty I were to keep silence. Those who have read my work hitherto will not fail to have discovered that, from my early days, I have proved myself to have been animated by an ardent love of country, that I possessed a sort of inherent patriotism, without having at all entered into politics. A patriot I consider to be a man who is devoted to the laws and constitution of his country in their purity; a defender of the rights and liberties of the people, and one who does his best to promote their happiness and welfare. Merely possessing the good quality of being charitable, by no means makes a patriot. Therefore, I am not professing any claim to patriotism, on the ground of my being at that period a friend to the poor. In the first place, I believe that charity and a sympathy for the sufferings of my fellow-creatures are inherent qualities of my breast; at any rate I know that I felt them in all their purity as long ago as I can remember. In the next place, I was taught to practice charity by the example of my amiable and excellent mother, who possessed as much christian charity, as well as piety, as any mortal that ever lived; she was, indeed the very milk of human kindness; and although my father taught me to exercise the virtue with more discretion, yet he never checked it. When my father died he was the Vicar's churchwarden, as well as the principal overseer of the parish of Enford; and, of course, as I came into possession of his estates and farms in that parish, I continued in the parochial offices, as his substitute, till the next Easter. During that time it was a severe winter, and I exercised my own discretion, and without any ceremony raised the pay of the poor, particularly of the aged and infirm, those whose labours were done. I found their pay at two shillings and sixpence per week each; I raised it to three and sixpence each, and in some instances, as in cases of infirmity, still higher; and, when some of the parishioners mentioned their objections, to the measure, I declined to reduce the allowance, but offered to pay out of my own pocket the advance which I had made, in case of my conduct being disapproved of at a meeting or vestry. No meeting, was, however, called; nor in this large parish, where the population is above six hundred, was there any complaint made to the magistrates by any pauper against me during the whole time I was in office.