arms of H----. But how, then, does the horse suck the lion's blood!
Money is the blood of the body politick.--But my zeal for the present
happy establishment will not suffer me to pursue a train of thought,
that leads to such shocking conclusions. The idea is detestable, and
such as, it ought to be hoped, can enter into the mind of none but a
virulent republican, or bloody jacobite. There is not one honest man in
the nation unconvinced, how weak an attempt it would be to endeavour to
confute this insinuation; an insinuation which no party will dare to
abet, and of so fatal and destructive a tendency, that it may prove
equally dangerous to the author, whether true or false.

As, therefore, I can form no hypothesis, on which a consistent
interpretation may be built, I must leave these loose and unconnected
hints entirely to the candour of the reader, and confess, that I do not
think my scheme of explication just, since I cannot apply it, throughout
the whole, without involving myself in difficulties, from which the
ablest interpreter would find it no easy matter to get free.

Being, therefore, convinced, upon an attentive and deliberate review of
these observations, and a consultation with my friends, of whose
abilities I have the highest esteem, and whose impartiality, sincerity,
and probity, I have long known, and frequently experienced, that my
conjectures are, in general, very uncertain, often improbable, and,
sometimes, little less than apparently false, I was long in doubt,
whether I ought not entirely to suppress them, and content myself with
publishing in the Gazetteer the inscription, as it stands engraven on
the stone, without translation or commentary, unless that ingenious and
learned society should favour the world with their own remarks.

To this scheme, which I thought extremely well calculated for the