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SPEECH, &c.

Mr. Mayor, and Gentlemen,

Am extremely pleafed at the appearance of this large and respectable meeting. The fteps I may be obliged to take will want the fanction of a confiderable authority; and in explaining any thing which may appear doubtful in my public conduct, I muft naturally defire a very full audience.

I have been backward to begin my canvafs." The diffolution of the Parliament was uncertain; and it did not become me, by an unfeasonable importunity, to appear diffident of the effect of my fix years endeavours to please you. I had ferved the city of Briftol honourably; and the city of Bristol had no reafon to think, that the means of honourable fervice to the public, were become indifferent to me.

I found on my arrival here, that three gentlemen had been long in eager pursuit of an object which but two of us can obtain. I found, that they had all met with encouragement. A contested election in fuch a city as this, is no light thing. I paused on the brink of the precipice. These three gentlemen, by various merits

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merits, and on various titles, I made no doubt, were worthy of your favour. I fhall never attempt to raise myself by depreciating the merits of my competitors. In the complexity and confusion of these cross pursuits, I wished to take the authentic public fense of my friends upon a business of fo much delicacy. I wifhed to take your opinion along with me; that if I should give up the contest at the very beginning, my furrender of my poft may not feem the effect of inconftancy, or timidity, or anger, or disgust, or indolence, or any other temper unbecoming a man who has engaged in the public fervice. If, on the contrary, I fhould undertake the election, and fail of fuccefs, I was full as anxious, that it fhould be manifeft to the whole world, that the peace of the city had not been broken by my rafhness, prefumption, or fond conceit of my own merit.

I am not come, by a falfe and counterfeit fhew of deference to your judgment, to feduce it in my favour. I ask it seriously and unaffectedly. If you wish that I should retire, I fhall not confider that advice as a cenfure upon my conduct, or an alteration in your fentiments; but as a rational fubmiffion to the circumstances of affairs. If, on the contrary, you should think it proper for me to proceed on my canvass, if you will rifque the trouble on your part, I will rifque it on mine. My pretensions are such as you cannot be afhamed of, whether they fucceed or fail.

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If you call upon me, I fhall folicit the favour of the city upon manly ground. I come before you with the plain confidence of an honeft fervant in the equity of a candid and discerning master. I come to claim your approbation not to amuse you with vain apologies, or with profes fions ftill more vain and fenfelefs. I have lived too long to be ferved by apologies, or to ftand in need of them. The part I have acted has been in open day; and to hold out to a conduct, which stands in that clear and steady light for all its good and all its evil, to hold out to that conduct the paltry winking tapers of excufes and promises-I never will do it. They may obfcure it with their fmoke; but they never can illumine sunshine by fuch a flame as theirs.

I am fenfible that no endeavours have been left untried to injure me in your opinion. But the use of character is to be a fhield against calumny. I could wish, undoubtedly (if idle wishes were not the most idle of all things) to make every part of my conduct agreeable to every one of my constituents. But in fo great a city, and fo greatly divided as this, it is weak to expect it.

In fuch a difcordancy of fentiments, it is better to look to the nature of things than to the humours of men. The very attempt towards pleafing every body, discovers a temper always flashy, and often false and infincere. Therefore, as I have proceeded strait onward in my conduct,

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fo I will proceed in my account of those parts of it which have been moft excepted to. But I must first beg leave juft to hint to you, that we may fuffer very great detriment by being open to every talker. It is not to be imagined, how much of fervice is loft from fpirits full of activity and full of energy, who are preffing, who are rushing forward, to great and capital objects, when you oblige them to be continually looking back. Whilft they are defending one service, they defraud you of an hundred. Applaud us when we run; confole us when we fall; cheer us when we recover; but let us pass on-for God's fake, let us pafs on.

Do you think, Gentlemen, that every public act in the fix years fince I stood in this place before you that all the arduous things which have 、 been done in this eventful period, which has crowded into a few years fpace the revolutions of an age, can be opened to you on their fair grounds in half an hour's conversation?

But it is no reason, because there is a bad mode of enquiry, that there fhould be no examination at all. Moft certainly it is our duty to examine; it is our intereft too. But it muft be with difcretion; with an attention to all the circumstances, and to all the motives; like found judges, and not like cavilling pettyfoggers and quibbling pleaders, prying into flaws and hunting for exceptions. Look, Gentlemen, to the whole tenour of your member's conduct. Try

whether