him to the stake, and apprehending they might lose their sport, if he
should happen to recant, would often clap him on the back, and cry,
"_Sta firme Moyse_ (Moses, continue steadfast)."

[Footnote 17: This was for the publication of "A Proposal for the
Universal Use of Irish Manufactures." [T.S.]]

I allow this gentleman's advice to have been good, and his observations
just, and in one respect my condition is worse than that of the Jew, for
no recantation will save me. However it should seem by some late
proceedings, that my state is not altogether deplorable. This I can
impute to nothing but the steadiness of two impartial grand juries,
which hath confirmed in me an opinion I have long entertained, that, as
philosophers say, "virtue is seated in the middle," so in another
sense, the little virtue left in the world is chiefly to be found among
the middle rank of mankind, who are neither allured out of her paths by
ambition, nor driven by poverty.

Since the proclamation occasioned by my last letter, and a due
preparation for proceeding against me in a court of justice, there have
been two printed papers clandestinely spread about, whereof no man is
able to trace the original further than by conjecture, which with its
usual charity lays them to my account. The former is entitled,
"Seasonable Advice,"[18] and appears to have been intended for
information of the grand jury, upon the supposition of a bill to be
prepared against that letter. The other[19] is an extract from a printed
book of Parliamentary Proceedings in the year 1680 containing an angry
resolution of the House of Commons in England against dissolving grand
juries. As to the former, your lordship will find it to be the work of a
more artful hand than that of a common Drapier. It hath been censured
for endeavouring to influence the minds of a jury, which ought to be
wholly free and unbiassed, and for that reason it is manifest that no
judge was ever known either upon or off the bench, either by himself or
his dependents, to use the least insinuation that might possibly affect
the passions or interests of any one single juryman, much less of a
whole jury; whereof every man must be convinced who will just give
himself the trouble to dip into the common printed trials; so as, it is
amazing to think, what a number of upright judges there have been in
both kingdoms for above sixty years past, which, considering how long
they held their offices during pleasure,