which if he had, he trusts he never should have been fool enough to
have so expressed.

The joke is a very bad one, and was repeated to me when I came to
town in January as Mackintosh's, probably with just as little
foundation as it is now attributed to the Chancellor.

Lord John's coarse and ungentlemanlike attack appeared to me very
much to miss fire, and my reply was well received and listened to;
but it is curious to see what common cause the newspaper reports
make in hostility against me--wilfully altering, and even inserting
things for which there was not the least foundation in my speech.

The _Times_ contained the only tolerable report, which was copied
in the _Courier_, and even from that it would appear that, instead
of being extremely clamorous and inattentive to Folkestone[80] (so
much that he was obliged repeatedly to stop, in order to procure
silence), and then listening to what I said very favourably, the
House had adopted a conduct exactly the reverse.

Lord Londonderry is to-day to open a plan of providing for the
annual charge of five millions now paid in half-pay, pensions, &c.,
by granting long annuities for forty-five years, by which means a
saving of two millions annually is to be made, which is to repeal
the salt tax and diminish the window-tax.

Being myself no friend to the Sinking Fund, and anxious that the
Government should have the credit of affording every practicable
remission of taxation, I have no objection whatever to this; but I
must say for those who support that system, it is somewhat
ridiculous with one hand to expend five millions in relief of the
burthens of posterity, and with the other to transpose a burthen
from our own shoulders upon theirs.

I am still myself sanguine in my hope of the continuance of peace,
as I think it clear that both powers wish to avoid war, and that
the Emperor Alexander is aware of the certainty that the flame once
lighted must spread further.

[80] Viscount Folkestone, the present Earl of Radnor.

THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES W. WYNN TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

House of Commons, Six P.M.

MY DEAR B----,

Lord Liverpool had not, at eleven this morning, returned from
Brighton, and Londonderry was not out of bed, or at least not come
down. I sent your two notes to the latter, but have not yet