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SPEECH, &c.

MR. MAYOR, AND GENTLEMEN,

AM extremely pleased at the appearance of this large and respectable meeting. The steps 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 publick 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 unseasonable importunity, to appear diffident of the fact of my fix years endeavours to please you. I had ferved the city of Bristol honourably; and the city of Bristol had no reason to think, that the means of honourable fervice to the publick, were become indiffe

rent 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, and on various titles, A a2 I made

I made no doubt were worthy of your favour. I shall never attempt to raise myself by depreciating the merits of my competitors. In the complexity and confufion of these cross pursuits, I wished to take the authentick publick sense of my friends upon a bufinefs of fo much delicacy. I wifhed to take your opinion along with me; that if I fhould 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 difguft, or indolence, or any other temper unbecoming a man who has engaged in the publick fervice. If, on the contrary, I fhould undertake the election, and fail of fuccefs, I was full as anxious, that it should be manifeft to the whole world, that the peace of the city had not been broken by my rashness, 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 afk it feriously and unaffectedly. If you wish that I fhould 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 circumftances of affairs. If, on the contrary, you should think it proper for me to proceed on my canvass, if you will rifk the trouble on your part, I will risk it on mine. My pretenfions are fuch as you cannot be ashamed of, whether they fucceed or fail.

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 difcerning mafter. I come to claim your approbation, not to amuse you with vain apologies, or with profeffions still more vain and fenfelefs. I have lived too long to be fervéd 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 ftands in that clear and steady light for all its good and all its evil, to hold out to that conduct the paltry wink ing tapers of excuses and promises I never will do it. They may obfcure it with their smoke; but, they never can illumine funshine by fuch a flaine as theirs..

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I am fenfible that no endeavours have been left untried to injure me in your opinion. But the ufe 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 conftituents. But in so great a city, and fo greatly diyided 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 falfe and infincere, Therefore, as I have proceeded

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