ΤΟ

WILLIAM EARL OF LONSDALE,

KNIGHT OF THE GARTER, &c. &c. &c.

MY LORD,

THE age of Dedications is over, and with reason for if a work is bad, no name, however great, can make it good; and on the other hand, if it have merit, the want of such a name will never disparage it. I must therefore look for other motives for begging to inscribe this work, such as it may be thought, to your Lordship. They may be easily known, at least by those who know what reason I have had, and for how long a time, to esteem you beyond all men now alive. The friendship you have allowed me to cultivate with you, and the distinctions you have condescended to shew me, while they have done me nothing but honour, make me hope that most of the opinions entertained in the following narration, as well as the scenes and topics described, will not be disapproved by your Lordship. If so, it will be

a pleasure to me to think that the advance of our years has not, as it has with many, created any difference between us in regard to those public or private principles which we entertained when both were much younger. To have been allowed to share with you in those principles, and to have acted upon them with you for years, has always been regarded by me as one of my truest sources of pride and gratification. In other

respects, you are now the only person left in the world, to whom I may say,

"Quod spiro et placeo (si placeo) tuum est."

Vale et vive, is the sincere wish of your obliged and affectionate humble servant,

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

66

a

THE following letters depict, I will not say, great man struggling with the storms of fate," but a rational being, who having acted a fair and important part in the State, quits it before he is worn out, or in other words, before it quits him. To think of a better world, and in doing so to take leave of his former pursuits, and cultivate his quieter tastes, and the natural, philosophic, and independent disposition of his mind, are his praiseworthy objects.

He has honourably filled very honourable employments, and might have obtained riches as well as power, but for this his darling and characteristic moderation. His resolution, however, being doubted by his contemporaries, and great and quick changes having occasioned much disorganization in the political parties of the time, it was