fall under the cenfure of Citizen Briffot or of his friend the Earl of Lauderdale, I ought to consider as proofs, not the leaft fatisfactory, that I have produced fome part of the effect I proposed by my endeavours. I have laboured hard to earn, what the noble Lords are generous enough to pay. Perfonal offence I have given them none. The part they take against me is from zeal to the cause. It is well! It is perfectly well! I have to do homage to their juftice. I have to thank the Bedfords and the Lauderdales for having fo faithfully and fo fully acquitted to. wards me whatever arrear of debt was left undifcharged by the Priestleys and the Paines

Some, perhaps, may think them executors in their own wrong: I at least have nothing to complain of. They have gone beyond the demands of juftice. They have been (a little perhaps beyond their intention) favourable to me. They have been the means of bringing out, by their invectives, the handfome things which Lord Grenville has had the goodness and condefcenfion to fay in my behalf, Retired as I am from the world, and from all it's affairs and all it's pleasures, I confefs it does kindle, in my nearly extinguished

feelings,

feelings, a very vivid fatisfaction to be fo attacked and fo commended. It is foothing to my wounded mind, to be commended by an able, vigorous, and well informed statesman, and at the very moment when he ftands forth with a manlinefs and refolution, worthy of himfelf and of his caufe, for the prefervation of the perfon and government of our Sovereign, and therein for the fecurity of the laws, the liberties, the morals, and the lives of his people. To be in any fair way connected with fuch things, is indeed a distinction. No philofophy can make me above it: no melancholy can depress me fo low, as to make me wholly infenfible to fuch an honour.

Why will they not let me remain in obfcurity and inaction? Are they apprehenfive, that if an atom of me remains, the fect has fomething to fear? Muft I be annihilated,' left, like old John Zifca's, my fkin might be made into a drum, to animate Europe to eternal battle, against a tyranny that threatens to overwhelm all Europe, and all the human race?

My Lord, it is a fubject of aweful meditation. Before this of France, the annals of all úme

(4)

have not furnished an inftance of a compleat revolution. That revolution feems to have extended even to the conftitution of the mind of man. It has this of wonderful in it, that it refembles what Lord Verulam fays of the operations of nature: It was perfect, not only in all its elements and principles, but in all it's members and it's organs from the very beginning. The moral scheme of France furnishes the only pattern ever known, which they who admire will inftantly refemble. It is indeed an inexhauftible repertory of one kind of examples. In my wretched condition, though hardly to be claffed with the living, I am not fafe from them. They have tygers to fall upon animated ftrength. They have hyenas to prey upon carcaffes. The national menagerie is collected by the first phyfiologifts of the time; and it is defective in no description of favage nature. They pursue, even fuch as me, into the obfcureft retreats, and haul them before their revolutionary tribunals. Nei-. ther fex, nor age-not the fanctuary of the tomb is facred to them. They have fo determined a hatred to all privileged orders, that they deny even to the departed, the fad Immunities of the grave. They are not wholly without an object. Their turpitude purveys to their malice;

and

and they unplumb the dead for bullets to affaffinate the living. If all revolutionists were not proof against all caution, I should recommend it to their confideration, that no perfons were ever known in history, either facred or profane, to vex the fepulchre, and by their forceries, to call up the prophetic dead, with any other event, than the prediction of their own difaftrous fate. -“ Leave me, oh leave me to repose !"

In one thing I can excufe the Duke of Bedford for his attack upon me and my mortuary penfion. He cannot readily comprehend the transaction he condemns. What I have obtained was the fruit of no bargain; the production of no intrigue; the result of no compromise; the effect of no folicitation. The firft fuggeftion of it never came from me, mediately or immediately, to his Majefty or any of his Minifters. It was long known that the inftant my engagements would permit it, and before the heaviest of all calamities had for ever condemned me to obfcurity and forrow, I had refolved on a total retreat. I had executed that defign. I was entirely out of the way of ferving or of hurting any statesman, or any party, when the Minifters fo generously and fo nobly carried

into

into effect the spontaneous bounty of the Crown. Both descriptions have acted as became them. When I could no longer serve them, the Minifters have confidered my fituation. When I could no longer hurt them, the revolutionists have trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I truft, is equal to the manner in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of mind and body, in which no circumftance of fortune could afford me any real pleasure. But this was no fault in the Royal Donor, or in his Ministers, who were pleased, in acknowledging the merits of an invalid fervant of the publick, to affuage the forrows of a defolate old man.

It would ill become me to boast of any thing. It would as ill become me, thus called upon, to depreciate the value of a long life, fpent with unexampled toil in the fervice of my country. Since the total body of my fervices, on account of the industry which was fhewn in them, and the fairness of my intentions, have obtained the acceptance of my Sovereign, it would be abfurd in me to range myfelf on the fide of the Duke of Bedford and the Correfponding Society, or, as far as in me lies, to permit a dif pute on the rate at which the authority appointed

by