creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very
spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin,
and covers me all over with the spray--everything of him and about him
is from the throne. Is it for _him_ to question the dispensation of the
royal favor?

I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between the public
merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the grants he holds, and
these services of mine, on the favorable construction of which I have
obtained what his Grace so much disapproves. In private life I have not
at all the honor of acquaintance with the noble Duke; but I ought to
presume, and it costs me nothing to do so, that he abundantly deserves
the esteem and love of all who live with him. But as to public service,
why, truly, it would not be more ridiculous for me to compare myself, in
rank, in fortune, in splendid descent, in youth, strength, or figure,
with the Duke of Bedford, than to make a parallel between his services
and my attempts to be useful to my country. It would not be gross
adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has any public merit of his
own to keep alive the idea of the services by which his vast landed
pensions were obtained. My merits, whatever they are, are original and
personal: his are derivative. It is his ancestor, the original
pensioner, that has laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit, which
makes his Grace so very delicate and exceptious about the merit of all
other grantees of the crown. Had he permitted me to remain in quiet, I
should have said: "'Tis his estate; that's enough. It is his by law;
what have I to do with it or its history?" He would naturally have said
on his side: "'Tis this man's fortune. He is as good now as my ancestor
was two hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man with very old
pensions: he is an old man with very young pensions--that's all."

Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to compare my
little merit with that which obtained from the crown those prodigies of
profuse donation by which he tramples on the mediocrity of humble and
laborious individuals?... Since the new grantees have war made on them
by the old, and that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken, let
us turn our eyes to history, in which great men have always a pleasure
in contemplating the heroic origin of their house.

The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, was a Mr.
Russell