The Virginia Gazette

To the Gentlemen, Clergy, and Freeholders of the county of Middlesex.

Gentlemen,

NOT gratefully sensible of those generous and patriotic principles, which have induced you to elect me your representative in parliament, I intreat you to accept of my best endeavours to express the joy, which inspires me on so interesting, so affecting an occasion. The personal regard you have shewn me indeed, confers on me an obligation, the due sense of which I too cordially feel to find words to describe. I cannot however forbear congratulating you, as the most distinguished of Englishmen, on the honourable proof you have given, that the genuine spirit of independency, the true love of our country, for which the county of Middlesex has for ages been so eminently conspicuous, still glows in your breasts with unremitting ardour, still shines forth with undiminished lustre. Let the sons of venality bow the knee to the idol of sordid interest. Let them call their pusillanimity prudence, while they ignominiously kiss the rod of power, and tamely stoop to the yoke, which artful ministers insidiously prepare, and arbitrarily impose. You, Gentlemen, have shewn that you are neither to be deceived nor enslaved. In proving yourselves enemies to ministerial persecution, the eyes of the whole kingdom, of the whole world, are upon you, as the first and firmest defenders of public liberty. Happy shall I think myself, if, fired by your example, the efforts of my warmest zeal may be deemed an adequate return for the favours you have bestowed on me: but however inefficient my abilities, my will to serve you is unbounded, as it is unalterable. Engaged as I have long been in the glorious cause of freedom, I beg you to consider my past conduct as an earnest of the future, and to look on me as a man, whose primary views will ever regard the rights and privileges of his fellow countrymen in general, and whose secondary views shall be attentively fixed on the dignity, advantage, and prosperity of the county of Middlesex:

Let me therefore desire of you, Gentlemen, to favour me from time to time with such instructions as may best enable me to accomplish those ends, resting assured of always finding me devoted to your service, and that the happiest moments of my life will be those in which I am employed in maintaining the civil and religious rights of Englishmen, and in promoting the interests of my constituents.

I am, with the truest respect, Gentlemen,

your obliged, and faithful humble servant,

JOHN WILKES.