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TO
All FATHERS, MOTHERS
and likely soon to be EITHER.
THOUGH the subject of the following sheets is of such universal
importance, that it would be difficult to name that human individual, to
whom it does not in some measure relate, you, it doubtless, more
immediately concerns.
UNDER no protection then so properly as yours can a work be put, not
presumingly calculated to determine your judgment, but only to recommend
to you the examination of a point, in which Nature would have such just
reproaches to make to you, for cruelty to yourselves, if you was
indolently to determine yourselves either without an examination, or on
a blind implicit confidence in others; in others, perhaps, interested to
mislead you. This last advertence of mine will, more than all that I
could offer besides, prove to you my sincere unaffected with for your
favorable acceptance of this essay of mine, on the footing of absolutely
no interest but purely yours. And that interest how dear! how sacred!
How indispensably ought it to challenge your preference almost to any
other interest of your own, and much more surely to any of others.
HAPPILY then for you, in a matter of such common concernment to
human-kind, Nature has not been so unjust, nor so unprovident as to
place a competent notion of it out of the reach of common sense.
DEIGN then, for your own sakes, to examine it by that light of Reason,
the spring of which is for ever in yourselves. It cannot fail of
affording you a sufficient certainty on which to rest your opinion, in a
point upon which it is of such deep, such tender importance to you, not
to form your resolutions on a wrong one. In virtue of such your own fair
examination, the decision will no longer be dangerously and precariously
that of others for you, no longer be nothing better than a lightly
adopted prejudice, but become truly and meritoriously the genuine result
of your own judgment.
BUT whatever your decision may be, at least to me you can hardly impute
it as an offence, my seeking to supply you with matter, whereon to
exercise that judgment of yours in so interesting a point. At the worst,
I have the consolation of being in my duty, while thus aiming, however
deficiently, at proving that with the most tender regard and unfeigned
zeal.
I am, respectfully,
Your most devoted, and
most faithful humble servant,
ELIZABETH NIHELL.
Haymarket,
Feb. 21, 1760.
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