Here are your books and very ashamed I am that they have been kept so long. They were mislaid having been tied up to be sent home to you and by mistake put on a shelf and were always looked at in that state as another parcel, while I have been fidgetted to death by your notes supposing the books were stolen I could not tell how.
However I console you a little perhaps for the disappointment by sending you a volume of Cobbet's Register2 which John Bone had and you will perhaps accept [one word][?] on Public Credit as a sort of propitiation for my offence. I remember some years ago I thought it contained valuable knowledge.
The books have neither been written in or sent to the Printers.
[Address:]
Mr. Place
Charing Cross
16.