the satisfaction to tell you, that we
are both in better health and spirits than we have been for a year
or two past; I may say, than we have been since we have been
at Enfield. The cause may not appear quite adequate, when
I tell you, that a course of ill health and spirits brought us to the
determination of giving up our house here, and we are boarding
and lodging with a worthy old couple, long inhabitants
of Enfield, where everything is done for us without our trouble,
further than a reasonable weekly payment. We should have
done so before, but it is not easy to flesh and blood to give up an
ancient establishment, to discard old Penates, and from house
keepers to turn house-sharers. (N.B. We are not in the Work-house.)
Dioclesian in his garden found more repose than
on the imperial seat of Rome, and the nob of Charles the Fifth
aked seldomer under a monk's cowl than under the diadem.
With such shadows of assimilation we countenance our degradation.
With such a load of dignifyd cares just removed from
our shoulders, we can the more understand and pity the accession
to yours, by the advancement to an Assigneeship. I will
tell you honestly B.B. that it has been long my deliberate judgment,
that all Bankrupts, of what denomination civil or religious
whatever, ought to be hang'd. The pity of mankind has for
ages run in a wrong channel, and has been diverted from poor
Creditors (how many I have known sufferers! Hazlitt has just
been defrauded of L100 by his Bookseller-friend's breaking)
to scoundrel Debtors. I know all the topics, that distress may
come upon an honest man without his fault, that the failure of
one that he trusted was his calamity &c. &c. Then let _both_ be
hang'd. O how careful it would make traders! These are
my deliberate thoughts after many years' experience in matters
of trade. What a world of trouble it would save you, if Friend
* * * * * had been immediately hangd, without benefit of
clergy, which (being a Quaker I presume) he could not
reasonably insist upon. Why, after slaving twelve months
in your assign-business, you will be enabled to declare seven
pence in the Pound in all human probabilty. B.B., he should
be _hanged_. Trade will never re-flourish in this land till such
a Law is establish'd. I write big not to save ink but eyes,
mine having been troubled with reading thro' three folios of
old Fuller in almost as few days, and I went to bed last
night in agony, and am writing with a vial of e