The Virginia Gazette

To the Author of a Manuscript Circular Letter.

SIR,

The method you fall upon to gain proselytes to an opinion that a division of the Chair and Treasury will produce the most frightful consequences seems to some people very disingenuous, and exceptionable. If you judge properly upon the subject, why do you refuse to give the public the advantage of your lucubrations? If your manuscript epistle is merely a device to alarm certain timorous Members of Assembly (as children are alarmed by ridiculous fears of hobgoblins) it is the most insolent attempt assuredly that ever was made in this country, and the greatest possible compliment to your own vanity and capacity. But if, Sir, the design of this masked battery be to blast views of honest ambition, in one or two particulars (who know not the injury they sustain) and to second those of another (when all are equally able to serve their country) I cannot help considering it as the most base and ungenerous action that hath ever fallen under my observation, in the politics of Virginia. Sir, it is incumbent upon you either to publish your circular letter or to send copies of it to every person concerned, otherwise your warmest friends must acknowledge it is unworthy notice, and that hereafter you cannot make a reasonable claim to their unlimited confidence.

I am, enterprising Sir,

Your obedient servant,

METRIOTES aliter et equus.