Read it through once

“Do not forget that, if the tax money be not paid early this week, you will be reported as a defaulter; and your friends the ministers would take great delight in popping you up.” This was contained in a letter of March 17, 1810. A week later a letter addressed to the Doctor at the Mount Coffee House, states:—“A letter came from Thompson Martin this morning which, knowing the hand, mamma opened. It was to request you would let him take the choice of your pictures [in payment of taxes]. I wrote a note to say, generally, that you had been in town for the last two months, and were still there; but that you would probably return next week to attend the Grand Jury, and would undoubtedly take an early opportunity of calling upon him. Was not this right? You will collect from this that we have received a summons from the under-sheriff, which was given over the pale to William this morning.” There is also, in a letter of May 10, 1810, a suggestion of further trouble of a pecuniary nature, although it is difficult to say to what it refers. “And now let me give you a little serious advice, my dear son and heir. If those people do not give you a secure _indemnity_, stir not a finger in this business. Let them ‘go to the devil and shake themselves,’ for I would not trust one of them with a basket of biscuits to feed my dogs. They have no more honour between them all than you ‘might put on the point of a knife, and not choke a daw withal,’ so comfort yourself accordingly; treat them as you would lawyers or the king’s ministers, or any other fraternity of known rogues and robbers.”