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selves? If I had gone round to the citizens entitled to freedom, and squeezed them by the hand,--"Sir, I humbly beg your vote,--I shall be eternally thankful,--may I hope for the honor of your support?--Well!--come,--we shall see you at the Council-House."--If I were then to deliver them to my managers, pack them into tallies, vote them off in court, and when I heard from the bar,--"Such a one only! and such a one forever!--he's my man!"--"Thank you, good Sir,--Hah! my worthy friend! thank you kindly,--that's an honest fellow,--how is your good family?"--Whilst these words were hardly out of my mouth, if I should have wheeled round at once, and told them,--"Get you gone, you pack of worthless fellows! you have no votes,--you are usurpers! you are intruders on the rights of real freemen! I will have nothing to do with you! you ought never to have been produced at this election, and the sheriffs ought not to have admitted you to poll!"-- Gentlemen, I should make a strange figure, if my conduct had been of this sort. I am not so old an acquaintance of yours as the worthy gentleman. Indeed, I could not have ventured on such kind of freedoms with you. But I am bound, and I will endeavor, to have justice done to the rights of freemen,--even though I should at the same time be obliged to vindicate the former[17] part of my antagonist's conduct against his own present inclinations. I owe myself, in all things, to _all_ the freemen of this city. My particular friends have a demand on mo that I should not deceive their expectations. Never was cause or man supported with more constancy, more activity, more spirit. I have been supported with a zeal, indeed, and heartiness in my friends, which (if their object had been at all proportioned to their endeavors) could never be sufficiently commended. They supported me upon the most liberal principles. They wished that the members for Bristol should be chosen for the city, and for their country at large, and not for themselves. So far they are not disappointed. If I possess nothing else, I am sure I possess the temper that is fit for your service. I know nothing of Bristol, but by the favors I have received, and the virtues I have seen exerted in it. I shall ever retain, what I now feel, the most perfect and grateful attachment to my friends,--and I have no enmities, no resentments. I never can consider fidelity to engagements and constancy in friendships but with the highest ap
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