The letter to Major Bellenden was from Henry Morton. It was couched in
the following language:
"I have taken a step, my venerable friend, which, among many painful
consequences, will, I am afraid, incur your very decided disapprobation.
But I have taken my resolution in honour and good faith, and with the
full approval of my own conscience. I can no longer submit to have my own
rights and those of my fellow-subjects trampled upon, our freedom
violated, our persons insulted, and our blood spilt, without just cause
or legal trial. Providence, through the violence of the oppressors
themselves, seems now to have opened a way of deliverance from this
intolerable tyranny, and I do not hold him deserving of the name and
rights of a freeman, who, thinking as I do, shall withold his arm from
the cause of his country. But God, who knows my heart, be my witness,
that I do not share the angry or violent passions of the oppressed and
harassed sufferers with whom I am now acting. My most earnest and anxious
desire is, to see this unnatural war brought to a speedy end, by the
union of the good, wise, and moderate of all parties, and a peace
restored, which, without injury to the King's constitutional rights, may
substitute the authority of equal laws to that of military violence, and,
permitting to all men to worship God according to their own consciences,
may subdue fanatical enthusiasm by reason and mildness, instead of
driving it to frenzy by persecution and intolerance.
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