The delivery of this paper may have very important consequences. It is true that the court may pass it over in silence, with a real or affected contempt. But this I do not think so likely. If they do take notice of it, the mildest course will be such an address from Parliament as the House of Commons made to the king on the London Remonstrance in the year 1769. This address will be followed by addresses of a similar tendency, from all parts of the kingdom, in order to overpower you with what they will endeavor to pass as the united voice and sense of the nation. But if they intend to proceed further, and to take steps of a more decisive nature, you are then to consider, not what they may legally and justly do, but what a Parliament omnipotent in power, influenced with party rage and personal resentment, operating under the implicit military obedience of court discipline, is capable of. Though they have made some successful experiments on juries, they will hardly trust enough to them to order a prosecution for a supposed libel. They may proceed in two ways: either by an _impeachment_, in which the Tories may retort on the Whigs (but with better success, though in a worse cause) the proceedings in the case of Sacheverell, or they may, without this form, proceed, as against the Bishop of Rochester, by a bill of pains and penalties more or less grievous. The similarity of the cases, or the justice, is (as I said) out of the question. The mode of proceeding has several very ancient and very recent precedents. None of these methods is impossible. The court may select three or four of the most distinguished among you for the victims; and therefore nothing is more remote from the tendency of the proposed act than any idea of retirement or repose. On the contrary, you have, all of you, as principals or auxiliaries, a much better [hotter?] and more desperate conflict, in all probability, to undergo, than any you have been yet engaged in. The only question is, whether the risk ought to be run for the chance (and it is no more) of recalling the people of England to their ancient principles, and to that personal interest which formerly they took in all public affairs. At any rate, I am sure it is right, if we take this step, to take it with a full view of the consequences, and with minds and measures in a state of preparation to meet them. It is not becoming that your boldness should arise from a want of foresight. It is more reputable, and certainly it is more safe too, that it should be grounded on the evident necessity of encountering the dangers which you foresee. Your Lordship will have the goodness to excuse me, if I state in strong terms the difficulties attending a measure which on the whole I heartily concur in. But as, from my want of importance, I can be personally little subject to the most trying part of the consequences, it is as little my desire to urge others to dangers in which I am myself to have no inconsiderable a share.