“It is with heartfelt concern that we have read your address, announcing your intention to withdraw yourself as a candidate for the representation of Liverpool.
“Impressed with a high respect for your talents and your
virtues, confident in your abilities, and still more so in your integrity, we
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“It is with pleasure that we discharge an incumbent duty in assuring you, that your conduct in that assembly meets “with our entire approbation. In most of the particulars of that conduct you expressed our unanimous sentiments, and in whatever cases any of us might differ from you in opinion, we paid cheerful deference to the purity of your motives. It was never our object to send into parliament a party agent, or an instrument of faction. Our honest ambition was, and is, to be represented by a man of undeviating honour, who would uniformly act according to the dictates of his conscience.
“Regarding you, Sir, as such a man, we have cherished an
earnest desire that you should again yield your services to the independent
burgesses of Liverpool, under the full persuasion that you retain the
affectionate esteem of a great majority of your late constituents. We were not,
indeed, insensible of the effects which had been produced by the
misrepresentations of your opponents. But we were assured that a simple
explanation on your part would have convinced
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“We are the more persuaded that these truths would have been brought home to the general feelings, from the unexampled attendance with which you were honoured on your arrival in Liverpool on Saturday last. As to the outrages which took place on that day, be assured we reflect upon them with mingled sensations of indignation and contempt. And we are confident that could you have been persuaded to authorise our firm but peaceable exertions in your favour, we should soon have demonstrated that the sense of the town is not to be ascertained by the chalk or the pen of the incendiary, nor its spirit by the clamour and violence of intoxicated ruffians.
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“As, however, you have declined to accept our services, however cheerfully proffered, we pay reluctant deference to your decision, expresssing our warmest wishes for your health and comfort in your retirement, and assuring you that the concern which we cannot but feel on this occasion is much lessened by the prospect of your again residing amongst us, and gratifying us by the attentions of private friendship. “Signed on behalf of a most numerous and respectable meeting of Mr. Roscoe’s friends,
