with their consecrated axes. I have injured, say
they, the Constitution; and I have abandoned the Whig party and the Whig
principles that I professed. I do not mean, my dear Sir, to defend
myself against his Grace. I have not much interest in what the world
shall think or say of me; as little has the world an interest in what I
shall think or say of any one in it; and I wish that his Grace had
suffered an unhappy man to enjoy, in his retreat, the melancholy
privileges of obscurity and sorrow. At any rate, I have spoken and I
have written on the subject. If I have written or spoken so poorly as to
be quite forgot, a fresh apology will not make a more lasting
impression. "I must let the tree lie as it falls." Perhaps I must take
some shame to myself. I confess that I have acted on my own principles
of government, and not on those of his Grace, which are, I dare say,
profound and wise, but which I do not pretend to understand. As to the
party to which he alludes, and which has long taken its leave of me, I
believe the principles of the book which he condemns are very
conformable to the opinions of many of the most considerable and most
grave in that description of politicians. A few, indeed, who, I admit,
are equally respectable in all points, differ from me, and talk his
Grace's language. I am too feeble to contend with them. They have the
field to themselves. There are others, very young and very ingenious
persons, who form, probably, the largest part of what his Grace, I
believe, is pleased to consider as that party. Some of them were not
born into the world, and all of them were children, when I entered into
that connection. I give due credit to the censorial brow, to the broad
phylacteries, and to the imposing gravity of those magisterial rabbins
and doctors in the cabala of political science. I admit that "wisdom is
as the gray hair to man, and that learning is like honorable old age."
But, at a time when liberty is a good deal talked of, perhaps I might be
excused, if I caught something of the general indocility. It might not
be surprising, if I lengthened my chain a link or two, and, in an age of
relaxed discipline, gave a trifling indulgence to my own notions. If
that could be allowed, perhaps I might sometimes (by accident, and
without an unpardonable crime) trust as much to my own very careful and
very laborious, though perhaps somewhat purblind disquisitions, as to
their soaring, intuitive, eagle-eyed authority.