"Dedication to Sir Robert Gifford, Knight, His Majesty's Attorney-General.
"Gratitude being one of the noblest traits in the character of animals, both rational and irrational, to whichever you may deem me allied, I feel that I owe it to you. I therefore embrace the earliest opportunity of dedicating a volume to you, in which I have had frequent occasion, most respectfully, to make allusions to your name and office. If I had followed the old and beaten track of troubling you with an adulatory application, begging your permission to accept this dedication, I am certain that it would have excited your ire to such a degree as to have occasioned a foaming at the mouth; equal to that which I lately witnessed in the Court of King's Bench. Therefore, considering that the soil of Devon has nurtured us both; that we sprang up at nearly the same time and under very similar circumstances, and that our relative situations in London has united us in an indissoluble tie, assuming a frank and friendly conduct, I have presumed to inscribe this second volume of the Republican to you as a token of my esteem and my sense of the high honor and benefit you have graciously bestowed on me. Should the Attorney-General be angry and think me over presumptuous, I am satisfied that Sir Robert Gifford will be pleased to have a volume dedicated to him which is replete with matter akin to his own feelings. You, Sir Robert, are amongst those who have taught us that a man, in office and out of office, forms two distinct beings, opposite both in nature and in principle; and I should not be surprised if, in the course of the revolutions of all that is natural, this country should adopt a representative system of government, or, in other words, a republican form, to find you filling some office to which your abilities shall be commensurate on the ground of your former boasted principles. It is a fact, daily demonstrated, that men who are eager to fill official situations never make principle a bar to obtaining them. It is but fair to say that when such men have a principle or attachment to a particular form of government, they are calculated to fill such a situation or office under that system with more satisfaction both to themselves and the public, but they are ever ready to sacrifice principle to interest. Since, Sir Robert, you cannot lay claim to eminence in this or any other degree, I am sufficiently charitable to lay aside the weapon of censure, and grateful to confine myself more to acknowledgment of the utility of your tergiversation towards him who prays that you may fill the office of Attorney-General as long as his Majesty or his heirs and successors shall grace the throne of Great Britain."
CHAPTER VIII. THE VICE SOCIETY
"A letter to the Society for the Suppression of Vice (self-styled, and by no one else) on their prosecution of the editor and his wife, and the object they have gained by it, namely, an exhausted fund.
"Lords, Ladies, Gentlemen, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, composing the secret society commonly called 'The Society for the Suppression of Vice'.
"It appears that you and I have come off like all other persons who go to law for justice: one with a ragged coat, the other with none at all, only with this difference, that I who am supposed to have been defeated have got the ragged coat, and you who crow on having defeated me have none at all. I did not attempt to notice your first advertisement begging for relief, and the means of proceeding in your warfare, and setting forth your pretensions and claims to public charity in glowing colors. I thought it probable from the nervous debility of poor John Bull that your warfare on what you call blasphemy, and about which you have made so much noise, might have so far terrified him as to fill your empty coffers, particularly as your advertisement was not repeated for the moment; but it now appears that your bait has not taken. To show you that I am really sensible of the benefit you have conferred on me, and the community at large, by the circulation of such an immense number of Deistical volumes and pamphlets, I shall give your advertisement a gratuitous insertion, and then proceed to compliment you a little further on your meritorious conduct towards myself and wife.
"'Advertisement.
"'"Society for the Suppression of Vice," Committee Room, January, 1820.—The Committee beg leave to state that within the last four years they have been compelled, in order to preserve the public morals from further contamination, to institute no less than eighty-five prosecutions against offenders of various descriptions, all of which have led to conviction or to recognizances by the respective parties, and must prevent the repetition of similar crimes. They have checked the sale of toys and snuff-boxes with abominable devices, which were imported from France and other countries, they have caused the whole stock in trade of some of the most shameless and abandoned traffickers in obscene books and prints, amounting to some thousands, to be seized, and have also destroyed no less than fifty extensive copper plates, from which impressions were from time to time supplied. And lastly, they have brought to condign punishment that most audacious offender, Carlile, who, notwithstanding repeated indictments found against him, still persisted in selling works of the foulest sedition and the most horrible blasphemy that ever disgraced a free press, or outraged the feelings and principles of a British public. The necessary expenses attendant on these measures have greatly exhausted the funds of this Society, but the Committee, etc., etc.
"'Subscriptions and donations are thankfully received by the treasurer, Henry Hoare, Esq., 37, Fleet Street, and by the secretary, Mr. George Pritchard, 31, Essex Street, Strand.'