The Plain Dealer, Numb. III - 17
WERE it not that this Lawyer was the leading man in our late Assemblies, and therefore a gentleman of singular consequence, I should not have taken the trouble of conversing so long with a person that discovers such an absolute contempt of truth. But I have a little more to say with the author of COOL THOUGHTS, a piece, which I can hardly read without wishing that the author had been measuring how many quarts of fire were contained in a watery cloud, instead of attempting once more to set this province on fire, that he may have an opportunity of gathering the spoil. Whatever indulgence we give the Lawyer, no excuse can be made for a Philosopher, when he willingly forsakes the truth. Was it pardonable in him to represent the Proprietors estate ten, fifteen, or perhaps twenty times as great as it really was, for its said that he was the original author of this computation, which has since been published in the news-papers, in order to make the nation jealous of the Proprietors wealth. Was it pardonable in the Philosopher to give such an unfair account of the lower county quit-rents. Suppose it be true that the crown has a right to half of these quit-rents, is the Proprietor obligated to collect and pay this money; and even suppose that were true, is he oblig’d to pay four times as much as
