or by every means to excite
a spirit in the House, where I had the honor of a seat, for carrying on
with early vigor and decision the most clearly just and necessary war
that this or any nation ever carried on, in order to save my country
from the iron yoke of its power, and from the more dreadful contagion of
its principles,--to preserve, while they can be preserved, pure and
untainted, the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good-nature, and
good-humor of the people of England, from the dreadful pestilence
which, beginning in France, threatens to lay waste the whole moral and
in a great degree the whole physical world, having done both in the
focus of its most intense malignity.

The labors of his Grace's founder merited the "curses, not loud, but
deep," of the Commons of England, on whom _he_ and his master had
effected a _complete Parliamentary Reform_, by making them, in their
slavery and humiliation, the true and adequate representatives of a
debased, degraded, and undone people. My merits were in having had an
active, though not always an ostentatious share, in every one act,
without exception, of undisputed constitutional utility in my time, and
in having supported, on all occasions, the authority, the efficiency,
and the privileges of the Commons of Great Britain. I ended my services
by a recorded and fully reasoned assertion on their own journals of
their constitutional rights, and a vindication of their constitutional
conduct. I labored in all things to merit their inward approbation, and
(along with the assistants of the largest, the greatest, and best of my
endeavors) I received their free, unbiased, public, and solemn thanks.

Thus stands the account of the comparative merits of the crown grants
which compose the Duke of Bedford's fortune, as balanced against mine.

FOOTNOTES:

[F] _From_ "A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD, _on the attacks made upon Mr.
Burke and his Pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford
and the Earl of Lauderdale, early in the Present Session of
Parliament." 1796._

* * * * *

_England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year, most part, deform'd
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies
And fields withou