I am an honest man, and a friend to justice and fair dealing. I have long been an observer of the transactions of the world, and have demised to myself a system of rules, which I have established as the permanent principles of my own conduct. I have established them, not in consequence of any deductions of science, but from the plain and simple deductions of common sense. I have never been subjected to an escape of passion, or an influence of interest, which has not been able to bring me into an exemption from them. I have never been a slave to any man, nor have I ever been an enemy to any man, but according to the measure of his own demagnet from the rule of justice. I have never been a friend to permanent deductions from that rule, in favour
