The style of your pamphlet, and the eloquence and power of composition you display in it, are such as do great honour to your talents; and in conveying any other sentiments would give me very great pleasure.  Perhaps I do not very perfectly comprehend your purpose, and the drift of your arguments.  If I do not—­pray do not attribute my mistake to want of candour, but to want of sagacity.  I confess your address to the public, together with other accompanying circumstances, has filled me with a degree of grief and dismay which I cannot find words to express.  If the plan of politics there recommended, pray excuse my freedom, should be adopted by the King’s Councils and by the good people of this kingdom (as so recommended undoubtedly it will) nothing can be the consequence but utter and irretrievable ruin to the Ministry, to the Crown, to the succession, to the importance, to the independence, to the very existence of this country.

This is my feeble perhaps, but clear, positive, decided, long and maturely reflected, and frequently declared opinion, from which all the events which have lately come to pass, so far from turning me, have tended to confirm beyond the power of alteration, even by your eloquence and authority.  I find, my dear Lord, that you think some persons who are not satisfied with the securities of a Jacobin peace, to be persons of intemperate minds.  I may be, and I fear I am with you in that description:  but pray, my Lord, recollect that very few of the causes which make men intemperate, can operate upon me.  Sanguine hopes, vehement desires, inordinate ambition, implacable animosity, party attachments, or party interests; all these with me have no existence.  For myself or for a family (alas!  I have none), I have nothing to hope or to fear in this world.  I am attached by principle, inclination, and gratitude to the King, and to the present Ministry.

Perhaps you may think that my animosity to Opposition is the cause of my dissent on seeing the politics of Mr. Fox (which while I was in the world I combated by every instrument which God had put into my hands, and in every situation in which I had taken part), so completely adopted in your Lordship’s book:  but it was with pain I broke with that great man for ever in that cause—­and I assure you, it is not without pain that I differ with your Lordship on the same principles.  But it is of no concern.  I am far below the region of those great and tempestuous passions.  I feel nothing of the intemperance of mind.  It is rather sorrow and dejection than anger.

Once more my best thanks for your very polite attention, and do me the favour to believe me with the most perfect sentiments of respect and regard, my dear Lord, Your Lordship’s most obedient and humble servant.

To MARY LEADBEATER

His last letter[1]

Bath, 23 May, 1797.

My dear Mrs. Leadbeater,