You will please put the usual construction on the word 'proposal.' What I desire is your consent to marry me.

If your first impulse now is to refuse, I beg you to do so in plain terms at once, and destroy this letter without reading further.

If you think, on the contrary, that we could achieve a future as pleasant as our past association has been--to me at least, here is what, as I think, you have to consider.
"You are a lady, rich, well-born, beautiful, loved by many persons besides myself, too happily circumstanced to have any pressing inducement to change your condition, and too fortunately endowed in every way to have reason to anticipate the least difficulty in changing it to the greatest worldly advantage when you please.
"What I am and have been, you know.

I may estrange from you some of the society which you enjoy, and I can introduce you to none that would compensate you for the loss.

I am what you call poor: my income at present does not amount to much more than fifteen hundred pounds; and I should not ask you to marry me if it were not that your own inheritance is sufficient, as I have ascertained, to provide for you in case of my early death.