Autograph letter signed : place not specified, to [Edward Dickinson], 1753 January 16.

Referring to an enclosed item (no longer with the letter) and what he sees as his ongoing ill treatment by his mother: "... where is that Highwayman, that cut-throat I could complain of, when from a mother it is I receive these stabs! stabs, which as if of themselves not murderous enough must be poisoned too with a treacherous air of kindness to make a parade of at her wretched, comfortless fire-side, to her cronies, her little lordees and ladies, or perhaps a Hooke, whilst they re-ecchoe to her 'Lord, Maam to be sure you are vast good indeed, and Mr Cleland must be mad to reject such an offer': and this pretious stuff satisfies her tender conscience"; saying of a proposal she has made that it is "not in my power to accept it, and [...] every instant added to the impossibility" (Cleland has emphasized this point with a manicule); writing of his mother: "Let her then, in God's name defraud me of all, and my only poor birth right, her affection and countenance. Let her vilely robbed as she has suffered herself to be of her Fortune, rob herself yet more vilely of the consolation only to be found in the arms of Nature: Heaven knows I pity and forgive her! and though she never remembered what she is to me, I pray daily to God, that I may never forget it"; referring to an essay or article on political matters: "Such toads as these every Government must expect to swallow that, like ours, is exercised only, per saltum, without principles, without rules, without theory, and, above all, without the least spirit of dignity [...] One observation too I cannot help making that there is an air of chicanery breaths through this Manifest that is more in the style of a pettyfogger than of a great Prince"; asking Dickinson to accept the essay as a token of his respect and "not to mention it, where according to an inveterately familiar custom, it would only expose me to constructions, which I from my soul laugh at and disdain, as the spawn of that over subtilizing malignancy, which I consider as God's revenge against the murder of common-sense, in a Woman-wit"; adding that he firmly believes that Dickinson "would have served me, had your commission not been restrained, and I think not over-honourably, to the strange task of insulting me, in my condition too!"