To Mr. Roger Davis, Bailiff, the Shrubbery, near Shrewsbury.
DAVIS,
I hope to God this will find you at home—I am writing in a state of mind bordering on madness. I can’t collect myself to give particulars—you will have a newspaper along with this—read that, and your hair will stand on end. Incendiarism has reached its height like the flaming thing on the top of the Monument. Our crisis is come. To my mind—political suicide—is as bad as felo de se. Oh Whigs, Whigs, Whigs—what have you brought us to! As the Britannic Guardian well says—England is gone to Italy—London is at Naples—and we are all standing on the top of Vesuvius. I have heard—and I believe it—that an attempt has been made to choke Aldgate Pump. A Waltham Abbey paper says positively that the mills were recently robbed of 513 barrels of powder, the exact number of the members for England and Wales. What a diabolical refinement—to blow up a government with its own powder! I can hardly persuade myself I am in England. God knows where it will spread to—I mean the incendiary spirit. The dry season is frightful—I suppose the springs are all dry. Keep the engine locked in the stable for fear of a cut at the pipes. I’ll send you down two more. Let all the labourers take a turn at them, by way of
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 practice. I’m persuaded the Parliament houses were burnt on purpose. The flue story is ridiculous. Mr. Cooper’s is a great deal more to t............