Divine, let me beseech you, if you value your charms, to proceed no further. Politics are a mixture of anger and deceit, and these are the mortal enemies of Beauty, The inftant a lady turns politician, farewell the fmiles, the dimples, the rofes; the graces abandon her, and age fets his feal on her front. We never find Hebe, goddess ever fair and ever young, chattering politics at the table of the gods; and though Venus once interposed in behalf of her beloved Paris, the fpear of Diomede taught her to tremble at the name of arms." And have we not a terrible example of recent, very recent date? I mean that of the unfortunate Mary Wolftoncraft. It is a well known fact, that, when that political lady began The Rights of Women, she had as fine black hair as you would wish to fee, and that, before the fecond fheet of her work went to the press, it was turned as white, and a great deal whiter than her fkin. You must needs think I have the ambition common to every author; that is to fay, to be read; but I declare, that, fooner than bleach one auburn ringlet, or even a fingle hair; fooner than rob the world of one heavenly fmile, I would with pleasure fee my pamphlet torn up to light the pipes of a Democratic club, or burnt like the Political Progress, by the hands of a Scotch hangman, or even loaded with applauses by the Philadel phia Gazette.

may

It is a little fingular for an author to write a Preface to hinder his work from being read; but this is not my intention; all I wish to do is, to confine it within its proper fphere. I am aware that my fincerity in this refpect may be called in queftion, and that malice afcribe to me motives that never entered my thoughts: but of this I am totally regardlefs; my work anfwers to its title, and confequently, nobody but the Democrats can have any thing to do with it. Nor does it court their approbation; I throw it in amongst them, as amongst a kennel of hounds; let them fnarl and growl over it, and gnaw it, and flaver it; the more they wear out their fangs this way, the lefs dangerous will be their bite hereafter.

Philadelphia, Feb. 19th. 1795.

A 3

BONE TO GNAW

FOR THE

DEMOCRATS.

TH

HOUGH the good people of America cannot for their lives comprehend the views, from which they have been favoured with a publication of The Political Progrefs of Britain, we may fuppofe, that the fondness of the Author led him to fee a poffibility of its being read; and, as it is in the nature of reading, to give rife to obfervations, he will not be furprised, that fome of thofe, arising from the reading of his patriotic labours, have, by a very ordinary procefs, found their way into print. It is thus that books, more grateful than the children of men, never fail to yield affiftance to those that have given them birth.

Whenever neglect lays its icy hand on an unfortunate production, another flies to its aid; and, though it cannot cancel the irrevocable doom, it faves it for a moment at least, from the jaws of the unclean monfter, that is day and night gaping to receive it. Such being, at least in part, the charitable views of this pamphlet, it will undoubtedly meet with a hearty welcome from all the friends of The Political Progrefs, and particularly from its Author.

Let me then afk, What could induce him to come a' the wa' from Edinborough to Philadelphia to make an attack upon poor Old England? And, if this be fatisfactorily accounted for, upon principles of domeftic phi lofophy, which teaches us, that froth and fcum stopped in at one place, will burst out at another, ftill I muft be permitted to ask, What could induce him to imagine, that the citizens of the United States were, in any manner whatever, interested in the affair? What are his adventures in Scotland, and his "narrow escape," to us, who live on this fide the Atlantic? What do we care whether his affociates, Ridgway and Symmons, are ftill in Newgate, or whether they have been translated to Surgeon's Hall? Is it any thing to us whether he prefers Charley to George, or George to Charley, any more than whether he used to eat