than I have authority to say. But the manner in which the
work was returned, and the particular time at which this was done, and
that after the offers he had made, are suspicious circumstances. I know
what the opinion of booksellers and publishers is upon such a case, but
as to my own opinion, I choose to make no declaration. There are many
ways by which proof sheets may be procured by other persons before a
work publicly appears; to which I shall add a certain circumstance,
which is,

A ministerial bookseller in Piccadilly who has been employed, as common
report says, by a clerk of one of the boards closely connected with
the ministry (the board of trade and plantation, of which Hawkesbury is
president) to publish what he calls my Life, (I wish his own life and
those of the cabinet were as good), used to have his books printed at
the same printing-office that I employed; but when the former part of
Rights of Man came out, he took his work away in dudgeon; and about a
week or ten days before the printer returned my copy, he came to
make him an offer of his work again, which was accepted. This would
consequently give him admission into the printing-office where the
sheets of this work were then lying; and as booksellers and printers are
free with each other, he would have the opportunity of seeing what was
going on.--Be the case, however, as it may, Mr. Pitt's plan, little and
diminutive as it is, would have made a very awkward appearance, had this
work appeared at the time the printer had engaged to finish it.

I have now stated the particulars which occasioned the delay, from the
proposal to purchase, to the refusal to print. If all the Gentlemen
are innocent, it is very unfortunate for them that such a variety of
suspicious circumstances should, without any design, arrange themselves
together.

Having now finished this part, I will conclude with stating another
circumstance.

About a fortnight or three weeks before the meeting of Parliament, a
small addition, amounting to about twelve shillings and sixpence a year,
was made to the pay of the soldiers, or rather their pay was docked
so much less. Some Gentlemen who knew, in part, that this work would
contain a plan of reforms respecting the oppressed condition of
soldiers, wished me to add a note to the work, signifying that the part
upon that subject had been in the printer's hands some weeks before that
addition of pay was proposed. I declined doing this, lest it