Page:Works of Burke (Nimmo 1887) vol. 2.djvu/103

Rh I hope for the honor of your support?—Well!—come,—we shall see you at the Council-House."—If I were then to deliver them to my managers, pack them into tallies, vote them off in court, and when I heard from the bar,—"Such a one only! and such a one forever!—he's my man!"—"Thank you, good Sir,—Hah! my worthy friend! thank you kindly,—that's an honest fellow,—how is your good family?"—Whilst these words were hardly out of my mouth, if I should have wheeled round at once, and told them—"Get you gone, you pack of worthless fellows! you have no votes,—you are usurpers! you are intruders on the rights of real freemen! I will have nothing to do with you! you ought never to have been produced at this election, and the sheriffs ought not to have admitted you to poll."

Gentlemen, I should make a strange figure, if my conduct had been of this sort. I am not so old an acquaintance of yours as the worthy gentleman. Indeed, I could not have ventured on such kind of freedoms with you. But I am bound, and I will endeavor, to have justice done to the rights of freemen, to vindicate the former part of my antagonist's conduct against his own present inclinations.

I owe myself, in all things, to all the freemen of this city. My particular friends have a demand on me that I should not deceive their expectations. Never was cause or man supported with more constancy, more activity, more spirit. I have been supported with a zeal, indeed, and heartiness in my friends, which (if their object had been at all propor-