Thus ftands the account of the comparative merits of the Crown grants which compofe the Duke of Bedford's fortune as balanced against mine. In the name of common fenfe, why fhould the Duke of Bedford think, that none but of the Houfe of Ruffel are entitled to the favour of the Crown? Why should he imagine that no King of England has been capable of judging of merit but King Henry the Eighth? Indeed, he will pardon me; he is a little miftaken; all virtue did not end in the firft Earl of Bedford. All difcernment did not lofe it's vifion when his Creator clofed his eyes. Let him remit his rigour on the difproportion between merit and reward in others, and they will make no enquiry into the origin of his fortune. They will regard with much more fatisfaction, as he will contemplate with infinitely more advantage, whatever in his pedigree has been dulcified by an exposure to the influence of heaven in a long flow of generations, from the hard, acidulous, metallick tincture of the fpring. It is little to be doubted, that feveral of his forefathers in that long feries, have degenerated into honour and virtue. Let the Duke of Bedford (I am fure he will) reject with fcorn and horror, the counfels of the lecturers, thofe wicked panders to avarice and ambition, who would tempt him in the trou

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bles of his country, to feek another enormous fortune from the forfeitures of another nobility, and the plunder of another church. Let him (and I trust that yet he will) employ all the energy of his youth, and all the refources of his wealth, to crush rebellious principles which have no foundation in morals, and rebellious movements, that have no provocation in ty ranny.

Then will be forgot the rebellions, which, by a doubtful priority in crime, his ancestor had provoked and extinguished. On fuch a conduct in the noble Duke, many of his countrymen might, and with fome excufe might, give way to the enthusiasm of their gratitude, and in the dashing style of fome of the old declaimers, cry out, that if the fates had found no other way in which they could give a *Duke of Bedford and his opulence as props to a tottering world, then the butchery of the Duke of Buckingham might be tolerated; it might be regarded even with complacency, whilft in the heir of confifcation they faw the fympathizing comforter of the martyrs, who fuffer under the cruel confifcation of this day; whilft they beheld with admiration

* At fi non aliam venturo fata Neroni, &c.

his zealous protection of the virtuous and loyal nobility, of France, and his manly fupport of his brethren, the yet ftanding nobility and gentry of his native land. Then his Grace's merit would be pure and new, and fharp, as fresh from the mint of honour. As he pleafed he might reflect honour on his predeceffors, or throw it forward on those who were to fucceed him. He might be the propagator of the stock of honour, or the root of it, as he thought proper.

Had it pleafed God to continue to me the hopes of fucceffion, I fhould have been, according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a fort of founder of a family; I should have left a son, who, in all the points in which perfonal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honour, in generofity, in humanity, in every liberal fentiment, and every liberal accomplishment, would not have fhewn himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his line. His Grace very foon would have wanted all plaufibility in his attack upon that provifion which belonged more to mine than to me. would foon have fupplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every difproportion. It would not have been for that fucceffor to refort to any ftag-,

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nant wafting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a falient, living fpring, of generous and manly action. Every day he lived he would have re-purchased the bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. He was made a publick creature; and had no enjoyment whatever, but in the performance of fome duty. At this exigent moment, the lofs of a finished man. is not easily supplied.

But a disposer whofe power we are little able to refift, and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to difpute; has ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might fuggeft) a far better. The ftorm has gone over me; and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has fcattered about me. I am ftripped of all my honours; I am torn up by the roots, and lie proftrate on the earth! There, and proftrate there, I moft unfeignedly recognize the divine justice, and in fome degree fubmit to it. But whilft I humble myself before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconfiderate men. The patience of Job is proverbial. After fome of the convulfive ftruggles of our irritable nature, he fubmitted himself, and repented in duft and

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afhes. But even fo, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a confiderable degree of verbal afperity, thofe ill-natured neighbours of his, who visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and ceconomical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard feason I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honour in the world. This is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury; it is a privilege; it is an indulgence for those who are at their ease. But we are all of us made to fhun difgrace, as we are made to fhrink from pain, and poverty, and disease. It is an inftinct; and under the direction of reason, inftinct is always in the right. I live in an inverted order. They who ought to have fucceeded me are gone before me. They who fhould have been to me as pofterity are in the place of ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation (which ever muft fubfift in memory) that act of piety, which he would have performed to me; I owe it to him to fhew that he was not defcended, as the Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent.

The Crown has confidered me after long fervice: the Crown has paid the Duke of Bedford by advance.

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