But enough. Here let us turn from the painful
scene, and leave this house divided against itself.
“MY DEAR FATHER,
“I send you two pamphlets on the causes of the
late changes in the ministry, one by a friend, the
other by an enemy, of Lord Oldborough. Temple,
I should have thought the author of the first, but
that I know he has not time to write, and that there
does not appear any of that behind the scene knowledge
which his situation affords. All the pamphleteers
and newspaper politicians write as if they knew the
whole—some confident that the ministry
split on one question—some on another; long
declamations and abuse follow as usual on each side,
but WISE people, and of course myself among that number,
suspect ’that all that we know is, that we know
nothing.’ That there was some private intrigue
in the cabinet, which has not yet transpired, I opine
from Temple’s reserve whenever I have mentioned
the subject. This morning, when I asked him to
frank these pamphlets, he laughed, and said that I
was sending coals to Newcastle: what this meant
he refused to explain, or rather he attempted to explain
it away, by observing, that people of good understanding
often could judge better at a distance of what was
passing in the political world, than those who were
close to the scene of action, and subject to hear the
contradictory reports of the day; therefore, he conceived
that I might be sending materials for thinking, to
one who could judge better than I can. I tormented
Temple for a quarter of an hour with a cross-examination
so able, that it was really a pity to waste it out
of the courts; but I could get nothing more from him.
Is it possible, my dear father, that you are at the
bottom of all this?
“Lord Oldborough certainly told me the other
day, and in a very significant manner, and, as I now
recollect, fixing his inquiring eye upon me as he
said the words, that he not only felt esteem and regard
for Mr. Percy, but gratitude—gratitude
for tried friendship. I took it at the time as
a general expression of kindness; now I recollect
the look, and the pause after the word gratitude,
I put this with Temple’s coals to Newcastle.
But, if it be a secret, I must not inquire, and if
it be not, you will tell it to me. So I shall
go on to my own affairs.
“The other day I was surprised by a visit at
my chambers from an East-India director. Lord
Oldborough, I find, recommended it to him to employ
me in a very important cause, long pending, for a
vast sum of money: the whole, with all its accumulated
and accumulating interest, depending on a point of
law. Heaven send me special sense, or special
nonsense, sufficient to avoid a nonsuit, of which
there have been already no less than three in this
cause.
“What do you think of Lord Oldborough’s
kindness? This is only one of many instances
in which I have traced his desire to serve me.
It is not common with politicians, thus to recollect
those who have no means of serving them, and who have
never reminded them even of their existence by paying
court in any way actively or passively.
