poor?" "Ought there to be an established religion?" "Is attainder and
corruption of blood ever a proper punishment?" "Ought the public
expenses to be defrayed by levying the amount directly upon the
people, or is it expedient to contract national debt for that
purpose?" "Was the execution of Charles I. justifiable?" "Should the
slave-trade be abolished?" In the next session, previous to his call
to the Bar, he spoke in the debates of which these were the
theses:--"Has the belief in a future state been of advantage to
mankind, or is it ever likely to be so?" "Is it for the interest of
Britain to maintain what is called the balance of Europe?" and again
on the eternal question as to the fate of King Charles I., which, by
the way, was thus set up for re-discussion on a motion by Walter
Scott.

He took, for several winters, an ardent interest in this society. Very
soon after his admission (18th January, 1791), he was elected their
librarian; and in the November following he became also their
secretary and treasurer; all which appointments indicate the reliance
placed on {p.160} his careful habits of business, the fruit of his
chamber education. The minutes kept in his handwriting attest the
strict regularity of his attention to the small affairs, literary and
financial, of the club; but they show also, as do all his early
letters, a strange carelessness in spelling. His constant good temper
softened the asperities of debate; while his multifarious lore, and
the quaint humor with which he enlivened its display, made him more a
favorite as a speaker than some whose powers of rhetoric were far
above his.

Lord Jeffrey remembers being struck, the first night he spent at the
Speculative, with the singular appearance of the secretary, who sat
gravely at the bottom of the table in a huge woollen nightcap; and
when the president took the chair, pleaded a bad toothache as his
apology for coming into that worshipful assembly in such a "portentous
machine." He read that night an essay on ballads, which so much
interested the new member that he requested to be introduced to him.
Mr. Jeffrey called on him next evening, and found him "in a small den,
on the sunk floor of his father's house in George's Square, surrounded
with dingy books," from which they adjourned to a tavern, and supped
together. Such was the commencement of an acquaintance, which by
degrees ripened into friendship, between the two most distinguished
men of letters