invasion could have induced the people to pay the immense drains that
were made upon their pockets by taxation; nothing less than the dread of
having their property annihilated, their wives and daughters violated,
and their children bayoneted before their faces, could have made them
submit to the burthens which they bore.

Our Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire, Lord Pembroke, had caused circular
letters to be written to the clergymen, churchwardens and overseers of
every parish, to return an account of all the moveable property, live
and dead stock, that there was in their several parishes; and also to
require every farmer to give in a list of his stock of grain, horses,
waggons and cattle; and at the end of it to state what he would
voluntarily place at the disposal of the government, in case of an
actual invasion; he was also to declare whether he was employed in any
volunteer corps, and if not, whether he would place himself under the
Lord Lieutenant and act as pioneer, driver, &c. In the parish of Enford,
a public meeting was called, which was held at the Inn. Being much the
largest farmer in the parish, I was called to the chair. Having opened
the business of the day by reading the circular of the Lord Lieutenant,
and explained as well as I could the object of the meeting, I urged
those who were present, which was every farmer of the parish, by all
the power of eloquence that I possessed, to come forward manfully and
devotedly, to resist the common enemy with their property and their
lives, in case they should dare to set a foot upon English ground. As it
was then my practice, and which it has ever continued to be to this day,
I told them that I should feel myself a disgrace to human nature, if I
could be capable of urging or exciting my fellow countrymen to any
act, in the danger of which I would not stand forward personally to
participate. I would, therefore, in the first instance, write down
fairly and honestly a true account of all the stock, live and dead, that