private adventure, hardly, indeed, any adventure at all. All that I could say of him I have said already in that short sketch which I printed after his death. This speaks as much as I could safely venture to speak of him as an artist, not having skill enough to enter into details on the subject. What you are to say of the character, merely as the character of a man, must, to have any effect, consist rather of a few light marking touches than of a long discussion; unless it relates to some of those various and perplexed characters which require a long investigation to unfold. If, without materials, one is to attempt anything of length and elaborate, there is a great danger of growing into affectation. I do not know whether you have the sketch I drew. It has marks of the haste and the emotion under which it was done. But I believe you will find that a great deal more cannot be said. If, however (for different minds see things in different points of view), you should turn your thoughts that way, and sketch out anything, if I might presume to intrude myself into a work of yours, I would work upon that ground, and perhaps something better could be done by such combination than singly.

Lady Inchiquin1 called here the other day; she is not anxious that the work should be published till the beginning of winter. I certainly will turn my thoughts to it; and if you could come to this melancholy place, I should feel myself much honoured and very happy in seeing you.

I have the honour to be, with most sincere respect and affection,

My dear Sir,

Your most obedient humble servant,

EDM. BURKE.

What a loss is Clifden! 2-Compliments to Mrs. Metcalf.

TO DR. LAURENCE.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

Bath, July 28, 1796.

I thank you for employing the short moment you were able to snatch from being useful, in being kind and compassionate. Here I am in the last retreat of hunted infirmity. I am indeed aux abois: but, as through the whole of a various and long life I have been more indebted than 1 Niece of Sir Joshua Reynolds, formerly Miss Palmer. The residence of Lord Inchiquin, destroyed by fire.

thankful to Providence, so I am now singularly so, in being dismissed, as hitherto I appear to be, so gently from life, and sent to follow those who in course ought to have followed me, whom, I trust, I shall yet, in some inconceivable manner, see and know; and by whom I shall be seen and known. But enough of this.

However, as it is possible that my stay on this side of the grave may be yet shorter than I compute it, let me now beg to call to your recollection the solemn charge and trust I gave you on my departure from the public stage. I fancy I must make you the sole operator, in a work in which, even if I were enabled to undertake it, you must have been ever the assistance on which alone I could rely. Let not this cruel, daring, unexampled act of public corruption, guilt, and meanness go down to a posterity, perhaps as careless as the present race, without its due animadversion, which will be best found in its own acts and monuments. Let my endeavours to save the nation from that shame and guilt be my monument; the only one I ever will have. Let everything I have done, said, or written, be forgotten, but this. I have struggled with the great and the little on this point during the greater part of my active life; and I wish, after death, to have my defiance of the judgments of those who consider the dominion of the glorious empire given by an incomprehensible dispensation of the Divine Providence into our hands, as nothing more than an opportunity of gratifying, for the lowest of their purposes, the lowest of their passions— and that for such poor rewards and, for the most part, indirect and silly bribes, as indicate even more the folly than the corruption of these infamous and contemptible wretches. I blame myself exceedingly for not having employed the last year in this work, and beg forgiveness of God for such a neglect. I had strength enough for it, if I had not wasted some of it in compromising grief with drowsiness and forgetfulness; and employing some of the moments in which I have been roused to mental exertion in feeble endeavours to rescue this dull and thoughtless people from the punishments which their neglect and stupidity will bring upon them for their systematic iniquity and oppression. But you are made to continue all that is good of me; and to augment it with the various resources of a mind fertile in virtues, and cultivated with every sort of talent and of knowledge. Above all make

out the cruelty of this pretended acquittal, but in reality this barbarous and inhuman condemnation of whole tribes and nations, and of all the classes they contain. If ever Europe recovers its civilization, that work will be useful. Remember! Remember! Remember!

It is not that I want you to sacrifice yourself blindly and unfruitfully, at this instant. But there will be a season for the appearance of such a record; and it ought to be in store for that season. Get everything that Troward has.

Your kindness will make you wish to hear more particulars of me. To compare my state with that of the three first days after my arrival, I feel on the whole less uneasiness. But my flesh is wasted in a manner which in so short a time no one could imagine. My limbs look about to find the rags that cover them. My strength is declined in the full proportion; and at my time of life new flesh is never supplied, and lost strength is never recovered. If God has anything to do for me here, here he will keep me. If not, I am tolerably resigned to His divine pleasure. I have not been yet more than a day in condition to drink the watersbut they seem rather to compose than to disorder my stomach. My illness has not suffered Mrs. Burke to profit as she ought of this situation. But she will bathe to-night. Give Woodford a thousand kind remembrances. Please God, I shall write to him to-morrow. Adieu.

Your ever true friend,

EDMUND BURKE.

Mrs. Burke never forgets you, nor what remains of poor William.

TO DR. LAURENCE.

Friday night, 10 o'clock, 18th Nov. 1796.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

I have been out of sorts for several days past, but have not been so much weakened by that circumstance as I might have feared. I don't desire long letters from you, but, I confess, I wish a line now and then, I mean very near literally, a line. The present state of things, both here and in Ireland, as well as abroad, seems to me to grow every moment more critical. In Ireland it is plain they have thrown off all sort of political management, and even the

decorous appearance of it. They had for their commanderin-chief Cuninghame, a person utterly unacquainted with military affairs beyond what was necessary for a quartermaster-general in a peaceable country. He had never seen war, hardly in any image, but he was a man of a moderate and humane disposition, and one from whom no acts of atrocity were to be apprehended. In order to remove him from the command of the army, they have made him a peer. This was a step to the appointment of * * * * *, to the full as little experienced in any real military service as * * * * *, but younger and of far different dispositions. In case of an actual invasion, they could not expect anything whatsoever from his military skill or talents. They only proof they had of either has been in his desperate promptitude, without either civil, criminal, or martial law, to seize upon poor ploughmen in their cottages, and to send them bound where he thought fit. By what he is capable of, and by what he is incapable, they show in what manner it is they mean to provide for the military defence and for the civil tranquillity and happiness of Ireland. They have fomented a spirit of discord upon principle in that unhappy country. They have set the Protestants, in the only part of the country in which the Protestants have any degree of strength, to massacre the Catholics. The consequence will be this, if it is not the case already, that instead of dividing these two factions, the Catholics, finding themselves outlawed by their government, which has not only employed the arm of abused authority against them, but the violence of lawless insurrection, will use the only means that is left for their protection in a league with those persons who have been encouraged to fall upon them, and who are as well disposed to rebel against all government, as to persecute their unoffending fellow-citizens. The parliament, encouraged by the Lord-Lieutenant's Secretary, has refused so much as to inquire into these troubles. The only appearance of any inquiry which has been, is that put into the hands of a person, I mean the Attorney-General, one of the avowed enemies and persecutors of the suffering people, and in the closest connexion with them. I see that the affections of the people are not so much as looked to, as any one of the resources for the defence of Ireland against the invasion which the enemy will make upon that country, if

they have force enough to do it consistently with their other views; but, I confess, that from the least reflection I am able to make in the intervals of pain and sorrow, I do not think that the invasion of either of these countries is a primary object in their present plan of policy-their views seem to me to be directed elsewhere, and their object is, to disable this country from any effectual resistance to them, by alarming us with fears for our domestic safety. They have gained their ends completely. The arrangements which we have made and are making in both kingdoms for that safety provide for it in the worst possible manner, whilst they effectually disable us from opposing the enemy upon his larger and real plan of attack. We oppose to his false attack the whole of our real strength. I have long doubted of the use of a militia, constituted as our militia is; because I do not like in time of war any permanent body of regular troops in so considerable a number as perhaps to equal the whole of our other force, when it is only applicable to one, and that but a very uncertain, part of the demands of general service. Whether I am right or wrong may be a question with persons better informed than I am, but it has been my opinion at least these twenty years. If I did not declare it in parliament, it was because the prejudice was too strong to be prudently resisted; but when danger comes, strong prejudices will be found weak resources.

Whatever the merits of militia may be, I am sure that no prudent persons with whom I have ever conversed have been of opinion that it ought to be extended beyond the old number. Other ideas however have prevailed. The infant resources of Ireland have been exhausted by establishing a militia there, upon the feeble plan of the militia here, and with consequences much more justly to be apprehended from an abuse of that institution. Whether with regard to the economical and civil effects on the military, they have now in both kingdoms added immensely to that erroneous establishment, if erroneous it is, and have thereby doubled the weakness instead of augmenting the strength of these kingdoms. I believe it will be found, that in both countries there is, by personal service or by public charge, the burthen of an army forming or formed of at least fourscore thousand men, utterly unapplicable to the general service of the country, or to the