On the whole, when I consider of what discordant, and particularly of what fleeting materials the opposition has been all along composed, and at the same time review what Lord Rockingham has done, with that and with his own shattered constitution, for these last twelve years, I confess I am rather surprised that he has done so much and persevered so long, than that he has felt now and then some cold fits, and that he grows somewhat languid and desponding at last.  I know that he, and those who are much prevalent with him, though they are not thought so much devoted to popularity as others, do very much look to the people, and more than I think is wise in them, who do so little to guide and direct the public opinion.  Without this they act, indeed; but they act as it were from compulsion, and because it is impossible, in their situation, to avoid taking some part.  All this it is impossible to change, and to no purpose to complain of.

As to that popular humor which is the medium we float in, if I can discern anything at all of its present state, it is far worse than I have ever known or could ever imagine it.  The faults of the people are not popular vices; at least, they are not such as grow out of what we used to take to be the English temper and character.  The greatest number have a sort of an heavy, lumpish acquiescence in government, without much respect or esteem for those that compose it.  I really cannot avoid making some very unpleasant prognostics from this disposition of the people.  I think that many of the symptoms must have struck you:  I will mention one or two that are to me very remarkable.  You must know that at Bristol we grow, as an election interest, and even as a party interest, rather stronger than we were when I was chosen.  We have just now a majority in the corporation.  In this state of matters, what, think you, have they done?  They have voted their freedom to Lord Sandwich and Lord Suffolk!—­to the first, at the very moment when the American privateers were domineering in the Irish Sea, and taking the Bristol traders in the Bristol Channel;—­to the latter, when his remonstrances on the subject of captures were the jest of Paris and of Europe.  This fine step was taken, it seems, in honor of the zeal of these two profound statesmen in the prosecution of John the Painter:  so totally negligent are they of everything essential, and so long and so deeply affected with trash the most low and contemptible; just as if they thought the merit of Sir John Fielding was the most shining point in the character of great ministers, in the most critical of all times, and, of all others, the most deeply interesting to the commercial world!  My best friends in the corporation had no other doubts on the occasion than whether it did not belong to me, by right of my representative capacity, to be the bearer of this auspicious compliment.  In addition to this, if it could receive any addition, they now employ me to solicit, as a favor of no small magnitude,