ou rightly observe that I have always
done justice to your skill and ability as a navigator, and to your good
intentions towards the safety of the cargo and of the ship's company. I
cannot say now that we are on different tacks. There would be no
propriety in the metaphor. I can sail no longer. My vessel cannot be
said to be even in port. She is wholly condemned and broken up. To have
an idea of that vessel, you must call to mind what you have often seen
on the Kentish road. Those planks of tough and hardy oak, that used for
years to brave the buffets of the Bay of Biscay, are now turned, with
their warped grain and empty trunnion-holes, into very wretched pales
for the inclosure of a wretched farm-yard.

The style of your pamphlet, and the eloquence and power of composition
you display in it, are such as do great honor to your talents, and in
conveying any other sentiments would give me very great pleasure.
Perhaps I do not very perfectly comprehend your purpose, and the drift
of your arguments. If I do not, pray do not attribute my mistake to want
of candor, but to want of sagacity. I confess, your address to the
public, together with other accompanying circumstances, has filled me
with a degree of grief and dismay which I cannot find words to express.
If the plan of politics there recommended--pray excuse my
freedom--should be adopted by the king's councils, and by the good
people of this kingdom, (as, so recommended, undoubtedly it will,)
nothing can be the consequence but utter and irretrievable ruin to the
ministry, to the crown, to the succession,--to the importance, to the
independence, to the very existence, of this country. This is my feeble,
perhaps, but clear, positive, decided, long and maturely reflected and
frequently declared opinion, from which all the events which have lately
come to pass, so far from turning me, have tended to confirm beyond the
power of alteration, even by your eloquence and authority. I find, my
dear Lord, that you think some persons, who are not satisfied with the
securities of a Jacobin peace, to be persons of intemperate minds. I may
be, and I fear I am, with you in that description; but pray, my Lord,
recollect that very few of the causes which make men intemperate can
operate upon me. Sanguine hopes, vehement desires, inordinate ambition,
implacable animosity, party attachments, or party interests,--all these
with me have no existence. For myself, or for a family, (alas! I have