[COYNE] THE TALBOT PAPERS 137 



N"o meeting has been held in the Province, the result of which has 

 been more gratifying to the friends of the country than the meeting in 

 question. No people in the colony have been more generously and favor- 

 ably treated by the Provincial government, and by its representative — 

 the Hon Col. Talbot : no people have been more uniformly successful and 

 prosperous — than the inhabitants of the Talbot settlement: and it is 

 gratifying to perceive that no people are more sensible of the advantages 

 which they enjoy; or more attached to the government of the country 

 wlîich has conferred and secured to them those advantages. 



(Printed fly-sheet.) 



The first Epistle of Bill Caughell to his Brethren: 



My Brethren : — As there is a whole shoal of us down the street, I 

 am determined to write an Epistle to you once in a while, for your edifi- 

 cation, as ye are numerous. It will also amuse the Public generally to 

 read letters written by a cockle — for a cockle you must know, and Bill 

 Cockle, in particular, is a queer little fish. He is very inquisitive, always 

 asking questions about the Rebels, and Eepublicans, alias the " nasty 

 fellows " or as they call themselves the " Liberals." Did you, my 

 Brethren, ever know one of these fellows who could procure an unblem- 

 ished character? Did you ever hear of one who had arrived at the age 

 of twenty-five, who had not some time or other in his life been guilty of 

 some dirty action? Besides being a Hypocrite, did not the Republican 

 Merchant leave his creditors in the lurch, just before he came to St. 

 Thomas? How knavishly after he came did he put off the person who 

 was authorized by those creditors to demand what was due to them ? Is 

 not this hypocrite merchant ;^ or as he is sometimes termed " Belial," the 

 comiptor of his own offspring, making him a pander to his traitorous 

 purposes? Does he not prostitute his own son by making him patrol 

 the streets of St. Thomas, looking into the yards and windows of houses, 

 and dropping into shops to see who are there, and to hear what they 

 are talking about — in order to report with proper additions to his 

 hypocrite parent, which information the hypocrite parent receives and 

 communicates with further additions to his infidel associates, and which 

 his infidel associates and himself manufacture into calumnies against 

 their neighbors? Has not the spectacled rogue achieved rogueries with- 

 out number, and within the knowledge of every inhabitant of the Talbot 

 settlement? Is he not an Atheist and Fanny Wrightist? Has not 

 Corporal Skin, alias the Republican Doctor committed perjury by 



1 Bela Shaw, a highly respected merchant of St. Thomas. The defamatory 

 persoDalities in this epistle are hardly to be taken seriously, of course. 



