erpretation. Mr. Thomas Grenville's letter on this
painful subject is an honourable testimony alike to his integrity and
his affection.

MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.

St. James's Street, Feb. 4th, 1785.

My dear Brother,

Anything that comes from you with the least prospect of bringing
back to me those sentiments of affection which, in spite of any
political differences, it has always been my first wish to keep
alive between us; any intimation of your looking for a brother
in one who has never ceased to be so to you; I cannot but be
eager to express the pleasure and satisfaction I feel in
receiving from you. And if I did not feel shocked and wounded by
those expressions which ascribe to my vote motives so foreign to
my nature, that I can scarce bear to read or repeat them, my
hopes of living with you in the affectionate intercourse of a
brother would have kept my attention to that pleasing prospect
only, and would have shut my lips upon every past subject of
difference. Can I really have to think that you are serious in
considering me as having struck at your honour and your life by
any vote that I have given? That such an expression can have
come from you after a year's reflection, wounds me more than
anything that could be said in the first moments of anger; and
it is not against such a charge that I can argue to defend
myself.

I cannot say with how much concern it is, that I have felt
myself obliged to allude to anything that has passed, nor could
I have been forced now to do it, was it not that to have said
nothing upon a charge so cruel might have looked like
acquiescing in the justice of it: of that vote I have always
said, and God knows, always truly said, that I made in it no
personal attack, felt in it nothing hostile to you, and
regretted in it only the misrepresentation and misconception of
others. I have said more, and still say, that the
misunderstanding of that vote is so grievous to me, that,
blameless as my motives were, I would not have given it, if I
had thought it liable to the misrepresentations that have been
made of it; yet, God knows, I thought it could be mistaken only
by those who did not know me.

I return with pleasure, my dear brother, to that part of your
note, in which I hope I find again the prospect of tha