Charlotte Smith

“ But I think also, that Englishmen must execrate the abuse of the name of liberty which has followed; they must feel it to be injurious to the real existence of that first of blessings, and must contemplate with mingled horror and pity, a people driven by terror to commit enormities which in the course of a few months have been more destructive than the despotism of ages—a people who, in place of a mild and well-meaning monarch, have given themselves up to the tyranny of monsters, compared with whom, Nero and Caligula are hardly objects of abhorrence. ”

“ By my friends I have often been congratulated, on the power I have possessed of warding off, in a great measure, the shafts of adversity from my children; but whatever gratification that reflection may afford, it is embittered when I consider that I have toiled only that others might rob—and that the more struggles I have made for their support, the greater has been the facility with which their trustees have given up their property to be plundered by others. ”

“ Johnson, I might justly plead in excuse for those defects, that it has been composed "amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow"—at a time when long anxiety has ruined my health, and long oppression broken my spirits at the end of more than ten years (a very great portion of human life) , during which I have been compelled to provide for the necessities of a numerous family, almost entirely by my own labour—and when I am yet to look forward to no other prospect for the future but a repetition of exertions on my part ”