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64 €83053

TO THE PUBLIC.

IN dedicating the following pages to an enlightened Public, I have only one request to make―That they will dare to judge for themselves. It is probable they will hear the Writer abused by all parties; they shall see him terrified by none. I am prepared to meet both open foes, and secret enemies. The latter will hide themselves under the mask of anonymous publication. But neither law nor equity recognize any difference between the Editor and the Author of anonymous calumny; they are virtually one and the same. But it is also probable that I have much over-rated my own importance; that I have been conjuring up Phantoms by which I shall never be attacked, and fancying dangers by which I shall never be disquieted. It may happen that the dusty shelf of my Publisher is the only rock on which I am doomed to be stranded, and that the aboriginal spiders of his shop, are the only enemies by which I am likely to be overwhelmed. I shall now merely add that these

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