nity and moderation, pardon and oblivion, will disappoint the efforts of all the seditious in the land, and extinguish their wide spreading fires. I have lived with this sentiment; with this I shall die.

WILLIAM DRAPER*.

LETTER XXVII.

TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.

SIR,

13 October, 1769.

IF Sir William Draper's bed be a bed of torture, he has made it for himself. I shall never interrupt his repose. Having changed the

* A few days subsequent to the publication of this letter, a report was circulated, that Sir William Draper, in consequence of his defence of Lord Granby, had been appointed to a governorship in America, which Sir William contradicted, in the following short note, addressed to the Printer of the Public Advertiser, Oct. 20, 1769.

"Sir,

"You are desired to contradict the report that Sir William Draper is appointed a governor in America. The story has been raised to make the public believe that he has endeavoured to vindicate those whom he knows to have been most infamously traduced for the sake of a reward. His motive for this voyage is entirely curiosity. He has nothing to do with the politics of this ministry, or any other set of men whosoever."

EDIT

subject, there are parts of his last letter not un deserving of a reply. Leaving his private character and conduct out of the question, I shall consider him merely in the capacity of an au thor, whose labours certainly do no discredit to a newspaper.

We say, in common discourse, that a man may be his own enemy, and the frequency of the fact makes the expression intelligible. But that a man should be the bitterest enemy of his friends, implies a contradiction of a peculiar nature! There is something in it which cannot be conceived without a confusion of ideas, nor expressed without a solecism in language. Sir William Draper is still that fatal friend Lord Granby found him. Yet I am ready to do justice to his generosity; if indeed it be not something more than generous, to be the voluntary advocate of men, who think themselves injured by his assistance, and to consider nothing in the cause he adopts, but the difficulty of defending it. I thought however he had been better read in the history of the human heart, than to compare or confound the tortures of the body with those of the mind. He ought to have known, though perhaps it might not be his interest to confess, that no outward tyranny can reach the mind. If conscience plays the tyrant, it would be greatly for the benefit of the world that she

were more arbitrary, and far less placable, than some men find her.

But it seems I have outraged the feelings of a father's heart.—Am I indeed so injudicious? Does Sir William Draper think I would have hazarded my credit with a generous nation, by so gross a violation of the laws of humanity? Does he think I am so little acquainted with the first and noblest characteristic of Englishmen? Or how will he reconcile such folly with an understanding so full of artifice as mine? Had he been a father, he would have been but little offended with the severity of the reproach, for his mind would have been filled with the justice of it. He would have seen that I did not insult the feelings of a father, but the father who felt nothing. He would have trusted to the evidence of his own paternal heart, and boldly denied the possibility of the fact, instead of defending it. Against whom then will his honest indignation be directed, when I assure him, that this whole town beheld the Duke of Bedford's conduct, upon the death of his son, with horror and astonishment. Sir William Draper does himself but little honour in opposing the general sense of his country. The people are seldom wrong in their opinions,-in their sentiments they are never mistaken. There may be a vanity perhaps in a singular way of thinking;—but when

a man professes a want of those feelings, which do honour to the multitude, he hazards something infinitely more important than the character of his understanding. After all, as Sir William may possibly be in earnest in his anxiety for the Duke of Bedford, I should be glad to relieve him from it. He may rest assured this worthy nobleman laughs, with equal indifference, at my reproaches, and Sir William's distress about him. But here let it stop. Even the Duke of Bedford, insensible as he is, will consult the tranquillity of his life, in not provoking the moderation of my temper. If, from the profoundest contempt, I should ever rise into anger, he should soon find, that all I have already said of him was lenity and compassion*.

Out of a long catalogue, Sir William Draper has confined himself to the refutation of two charges only. The rest he had not time to discuss; and indeed it would have been a laborious undertaking. To draw up a defence of such a series of enormities, would have required a life at least as long as that, which has been uniformly employed in the practice of them. The public opinion of the Duke of Bedford's extreme œconomy is, it seems, entirely without foundation. Though not very prodigal abroad,

*See Private Letters, No. 10.

in his own family at least, he is regular and magnificent. He pays his debts, abhors a beggar, and makes a handsome provision for his son. His charity has improved upon the proverb, and ended where it began. Admitting the whole force of this single instance of his domestic generosity (wonderful indeed, considering the narrowness of his fortune, and the little merit of his only son) the public may still perhaps be dissatisfied, and demand some other less equivocal proofs of his munificence. Sir William Draper should have entered boldly into the detail-of indigence relieved-of arts encouraged-of science patronized; men of learning protected, and works of genius rewarded; in short, had there been a single instance, besides Mr. Rigby*, of blushing merit brought forward by the Duke, for the service of the public, it should not have been omittedt.

* This gentleman is supposed to have the same idea of blushing, that a man blind from his birth, has of a scarlet or skyblue.

+ In answer to this heavy charge, two instances of the noble Duke's benevolence were brought forward in two separate letters in the Public Advertiser. The one dated Oct. 17, and signed Frances, which states his having relieved with a patent employment, the husband of the writer of a series of sentimental letters of " Henry and Frances," in which the author, a Mrs. Griffiths, fictitiously depicted their own real distress. The other dated Oct. 20, and signed Jere. Mears, Lieut. of the