Class JA5VL Rnnk I ff &0 DOBELL COLLECTION / / NARRATIVE, BY lUfll. DENIS O'BRYEN, IN CONSEQVSNCfi OF THE ATTACK. MADE UPON HIM Br X Q%t Hon. % <0. Bennett* IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON TUESDAY, THE 17th OF OCTOBER, 18*0. IN THREE PARTS. Hontron: Printed by G. Sidney, Northumberland Street, Strand. 205449 '13 Part the First. From the death of Mr. Pitt to the death of Mr. Fox. Part the Second. From the death of Mr, Fox to the spring of 1 8 16 21 Part the Third. From 1 8 1 6 to the present day..... 39 * # * Into whatever hands this pamphlet may fall, the temporary possessor is entreated to do, in regard to it, ' as he would be done unto.* There will be only six copies struck off at first. Further circulation must depend upon circum- stances. At all events, the writer supplicates that he may be allowed to make it a point of honour with the reader, that the work may not be seen by any person connected with newspapers — or other publications. November the 2ld, 1820. December the 2d, 1820. According to the intimation given above, only six copies of this Narrative were struck off on Thursday morning, the 23 d of November. One of those six was enclosed to Mr. Bennett — but only a few hours before the two Houses of Parliament met, on that day. The quickness of the Pro- rogation prevented the writer's knowing what the intentions of Mr. Bennett were, with regard to reparation on the scene of the attack. The diffusion of this work to this day, (the 2d of Decern- ber, IS 20 J is confined to the six copies referred to above. Shoidd the pamphlet, diverging a little beyond that small circle, reach those still surviving persons named in it, the communication, to such, will not be the worst voucher of the author's confidence in the invulnerableness of his state- ments. 21, Craven Street, Strand. NARRATIVE, BY MR. DENIS OBRYEN, #c. 8$c. PART THE FIRST. From the death of Mr. Pitt to the death oj Mr. Fox. On Thursday, the 23d of January, 1806, Mr. Pitt departed this life. The next day (the 24th) was Mr. Fox's birth-day. Though engaged to dine at Mr. Fox's, in celebration of his birth- day, I made my accustomed morning call in Arlington Street, where Mr, Fox then resided. At this call Mr. Fox addressed the following words to the late General Fitz-Patrick and to myself, who alone were in the room, besides Mrs. Fox. " Now that poor Pitt is gone, I am at liberty to tell you, that he and I had a private meeting, at a time when the two parties were so furious that arms only were wanting to their falling upon each other. Pitt and I, in perfect tranquillity, talked for two hours— we could not agree— but neither was at liberty to say any thing regarding the interview, until the other was dead. We met at that time at a Lady's house — (Aye, my Car,* interposed Mrs. Fox ; and did not I, who was in the secret, keep it close ?) " In fact," con- * Car was an abbreviation of Carlo-— an endearing appella- tion frequent with Mrs. Fox. A2 tinued Mr. Fox, " Pitt and I had another meet- ing* long after thejirst," he. &c. On the Monday after this communication, viz. on the 27th of January, 1806, the late King authorised Lord Grerwille, at that, his Lordship's first interview with His Majesty sub- sequently to the death of Mr. Pitt, to consult with Mr. Fox upon the formation of a new government. Upon each of the nights of Mon- day, Tuesday and Wednesday, (the 27th, 28th, and 29th of January, 1S06,) Mr. Fox at his nightly return from Lord Grenville, between nine and ten o'clock, detained me, he having pre- viously fixed me to be in waiting for him, even until after he had performed his ablutions, and went to bed — (Mrs. Fox retiring at the com- mencement of his preparations) — and he not allowing me to come away till, in his night gown, with his night- cap in his hand, he ascended one flight of stairs to his chamber, while I descended the other, to return home. Posterior events proved to me that Mr. Fox was quite unreserved in his communications to me upon those nights. Excepting Lord Grenville, and, possibly, Mr. Thomas Grenville, I am quite sure that my know- ledge, as to the then forming Cabinet, and the other principal destinations, was prior to that of any other wtf/z— living or dead. During the entire week to which I am alluding, I never once touched upon my own interest. — Not so Mr. Fox. Towards the close of our conversation on the night of Tuesday the 28th (Jan. 1806) Mr. Fox ejaculated this sentence, * O'Bryen, I want a good man for America* I * The reader is requested to keep this second meeting be- tween those mighty adversaries in his memory, at the perusal of page 49. remained perfectly silent. About the same time upon the next night, (Wednesday the 29th) looking at me with unusual earnestness, Mr. Fox said, * O'Bryen cant you think of a good man. for America.' To misunderstand the drift of the question was impossible ; but I made no answer. On the day after Mr. Fox's first hint about America, namely on the 29th, I mentioned this incident to Mr., now the Lord Chief Commis- sioner Adam, at my own house, remarking to the Lord Chief Commissioner my surprise at Mr. Fox's not adverting to the utter impossibility of my leaving London, on account of the nature and number of my perplexities, with which he (Mr. Fox) was as well acquainted as the Lord Chief Commissioner, or myself. The Lord Chief Com- missioner (fully sensible of the impracticability of any arrangement of my private concerns without pecuniary means which to me were wholly inacces- sible) said, 'You of course have no objection to my suggesting that mission to Erskine. It would be just the thing for David f (meaning the eldest son of the now Lord Erskine.} ' On the contrary, I shall be very happy at his obtaining the appoint- ment,' was my most hearty and ready reply. From about the time of the Commons'' vote against the late Lord Melville (8th of April 1805) up to the death of Mr. Pitt I had laboured in partisanship with a carelessness of my own health which had nearly proved fatal to me. Except- ing the Resolutions for the Middlesex Meeting (which were written by Mr. Creevy) almost every thing fell upon me,— Resolutions — Addresses to the King— -Petitions to Parliament, &c. &c Ne- ver did mortal work harder or more variously, or more improvidently for his own frame, than I worked in those nine months. The winter set in with uncommon severity. From Thursday the SOth to Monday evening the 3d of February (1806) I was forced to keep my bed or bed-room. Pending this confinement the following communications took place. On Thursday the SOth of January (1806) I received from Mr. (now Alderman and Sheriff) Walthman an urgent letter for Mr. Fox's senti- ments respecting notices, given upon that day, of some contemplated proceedings in the Court of Common Council. In consequence of Mr. Waithman's earnest letter, which was delivered to me in bed at nine in the evening, I got up and wrote a note to Mr. Fox, to which the following was the answer. < Dear O'B. ' I like Mr. Waithman's plan much, if he is sure of ' success ; but I fear he may be jockeyed by a day being ' fixed too early for congratulating the K — on the new ' Ministry ; because I suppose that can hardly be done ' upon mere rumour ; and I do not think (let things go 1 ever so right) that any of us shall kiss hands before ' Monday. I submit all this to Combe, Thorpe and 1 Waithman, who will I dare say manage it well. There ' might no doubt be thanks for removal ; but that would ' not be so satisfactory as thanks after the names are * known. ' Your's ever, ■ Thursday Night: « C. J. F. 1 Do you know that there is an advertisement in the • Morning Post declaring an anonymous candidate ?' On the same Thursday (the 30th of January 1 806,) Mrs. Fox kindly remembered me in my sick bed, as follows. ' There is no news good bad or indifferent. They were ' obliged to send an excuse as they were not ready. It * will be to-morrow or next day. It is a dreadful cold day, - You had better not go out. ' Your's ever, f E. F.' On Friday morning (the 3 1 st of January 1 806) Mrs. Fox thus wrote to me,* still confined to my room. * There is nothing known yet. As soon as it is, I will * let you know/ On the night of the same day, Mrs. Fox wrote thus. ' I dare say you have heard before this that the K — ' told Lord Grenville he could not give him an answer ' to-day but that he should have one in eight and forty * hours. I hope he does not mean to play them any < ***. I hope your cold is better. This is dreadful ' weather. e Your's ever, « Friday Night' « E. FOX. On Saturday the 1st of February (1806) the present King, then Prince of Wales, went after the Opera to Mr. Fox in Arlington-street and remained with Mr. F. till between 1 and 2 o'clock in the morning. After the Prince's departure, even at that unseasonable hour, Mr. Fox wrote to me as follows. < Dear O'B. * All is off. The K. asked some questions relative to ' a paragraph in our Propositions respecting the necessity * of considering the Army and Home Defence ; and ' not being satisfied with Lord G.'s answers, said he ' would reconsider the whole of the thing. This was * All the documents copied into this narrative are extant and in my possession. 8 1 between nine and ten to-night ; and he afterwards sent i to Lord Hawkesbury to be with him to-morrow morn ' ing at eleven. So the thing rests. There has been no ' schism among us of any kind whatever. 1 Your's ever, < Saturday Night.' < C. J. FOX. ' If any thing can be done in the Common Council • by way of Address to the K — , to form a strong and ' vigorous Administration, it will be very good ; but it ' should not be attempted unless success be pretty sure. ' Your's ever, l74; and arrested me for the book debt of Messrs. Capper (^BSO.) for which these latter had never even furnished me with a bill. The sheriff's officer, thinking he saw death in my countenance, said — • Whatever hap- pens, Sir, I shan't take you away/ ' Even butch- ers weep.' The man in possession has cruelly teized and pillaged me. I implored a respite from his vexations only until after the 23d — stating, that my undisturbed mind was never so essential to me as this week. He has tortured me more in the last four days than in the whole antecedent four weeks. But these are trifles compared with other effects of Mr. Bennett 9 s kindness to me. It has been my comfort through life, that I had laid the fastest hold of those who knew me best. Mr. Fox knew me. Mr. Burke* knew me. * I made the fortune of Doctor Lawrence — unknown to the Doctor. That Prince of prose writers, Mr. Burke, informed me in a beautiful letter from Beaconsneld, that he selected me, of all mankind to assist himself and the other Managers for the Commons in the arrangement of the papers necessary to the Impeachment against Mr. Hastings. I declined the proffer by the same post j giving as a reason that I had not industry •ufficient for the undertaking. Mr. Burke wrote back to me that * he would not allow me to commit such a suicide.' He detailed to me the benefits and honours to which my acceptance of his proposition could not fail to lead— gave me three days to pause ; and fixed a meeting with me at the end of the three days, at Mr. Adey the Banker's. I wrote by return of post a decisive decliner ; which irked Mr. Burke greatly. Mr Sheridan recommended Mr. Lawrence — at that time unknown to every member of the Whig party, except Mr. Sheridan him- self. No man ever better deserved his elevation than Mr. (afterwards Doctor) Lawrence — but he indubitably owed his advancement to my — indolence. 47 Poor Sheridan knew me. The Lord Chief Com- missioner knows me. I was in hopes that by de- grees Lord Liverpool and Mr. Canning would know me — (Lord Liverpool, with whom I had the honour of something like a salutation acquaint- ance nearly since his Lordship's entrance upon public life — Mr. Canning, whom I had known from a stripling long before he left Eton) and my faith is absolute that I should accomplish an exchange of my mockery of an office at the Cape for something efficient — but for the light in which I had been exhibited to the world by the son of Mr. Fox's near neighbour and friend, the Earl of Tankerville — such exhibitor being also the nephew of the Duke of Bedford. I have not seen a single person connected with the go- vernment since Mr. Bennett's attack upon me. My plight, in respect to the only two Ministers whom I looked to, will be gathered from the following fact. Mr. Canning has a private secretary worthy of such a Principal. Than the gentleman in question, (Mr. Backhouse) this island contains not a man of better sense or manners. I lately sent one letter, and only one, to Mr. Backhouse—- that gentleman of not surpassed manners and good sense — returned my letter by my messen- ger— unopened ! From the few friends of which Mr. Bennett has not deprived me, I learn, that I have not read a tenth part of the libels published against me ; and I understand that Lord Castlereagh is constantly bemired in conjunction with my name. His Lord- ship, however, has comparitive youth, health, wealth, power. In all these relations I am the Noble Lord's exact antipode. He despises libellers, /owe 48 a duty to that liberty of the press which I have long used without once abusing, and shall assu- redly make twelve Englishmen, upon their oaths, decide between my traducers and myself — being quite certain that they are the most fatal ene- mies to that most valuable of all rights, who give a practical impunity to libellers. To Lord Castlereagh I never opened my lips, nor ever wrote one line, except upon the concerns of the Irish Charity — to which institution the Noble Lord is a most bountiful benefactor ; and with regard to Lord Sidmouth, — I never exchanged a syllable or a line with his Lordship, — in my whole life. A Benettised mob rushed before my house upon the illuminations ; but, perceiving that I out blazed all my neighbours, the sage gentlemen con- tented themselves with a few Bennetiisms — in piano cadence. The escape, however, of the windows, of the house, and of the house-keeper, was not attributable to Mr. Bennett. When I first heard of the charge, on which Mr. Bennett has so much improved, I literally published myself. Un- til sickness struck me down, I got daily on horse- back. I rode to Bow Street. I went to public amusements. I stood at my windows contrary to my custom. I kept the windows unshuttered till ten each night. By these means I saved wretches from perjury,* and myself from persecution. * Since the above was printed, a Bill of Indictment for conspiracy with Mr. Fletcher has been found against me. On the back of the Bill are thirteen names, to me entirely unknown, except the two first — viz. Mr. Joseph Hume, M. P. (ivith whom J never exchanged one word,) and Mr. Charles Pearson (whose face I never beheld until, on the 10th of October last, he accompanied Viccary in search of Mr. 49 To the law I look for redress upon my non-par- liamentary enemies ; but no law can touch upon a Member's privilege of speech. And, oh God 7 what an use of a glorious public right to employ it for private wrong and ruin ! Fletcher, under the name of Franklin — a name unknown in my house. These 13 names are, besides Messrs. Hume and Pearson, as follows ; — Arthur Seale, — Joseph Martin,— Ann Jones, — Martha Shear,— Win, Turner, — James Brown, — William Harris, — Andrew Shear, — Richard Wild,— John Jones, and John Hockley. Of the existence of these persons I was unaware till this incident occurred. 1 am not conscious of having ever seen any one of them. I hope good men will assist me in this conflict with bad men. Pendente lite, I can only leave it to discerning men to draw their own inferences from the fact of a bill being found upon the ex parte swearing of 13 persons, totally unknown to the defendant. This Bill was found on Monday last, the 27th of Novem- ber 1820, at 5 o'clock in the evening. Before 9 o'clock at night I had returned home, together with my two neighbours, who bailed the action, All, (beside the above) that has been newspapered upon this occasion, is the usual misrepresenta- tion of every concern of mine. Previous to the Term, just expired, my adversaries well knew that I retained Messrs. Scarlett, Gumey, and Bolland. Until the third week of Term, illness totally disabled me from all legal preparation towards legal redress of my count- leis wrongs. Since I have been so far recovered as to hold a peu, this pamphlet has so entirely engrossed me that the whole Term has been unavoidably lost to me. Though the pace of Justice be slow, its steps are steady. I studiously avoid the course pursued by my enemies, that of constantly striving to influence the course of law by an illicit use of the press. If the rest of mankind combined to set up a fourth Estate in this Constitution, 1 shall be no party to such an usurpation. I distinctly refuse to plead to any other jurisdiction than the legal tribunals of my country. Those tribunals I shall neither offend by obstruction, nor outrage by premature contraband publication — even though I am the victim of lies and Wbels— unparalleled. December 2d, 1820. E 50 Here I take leave to say, that I believe I have mot one political enemy, out of the pale of Radi- calism, who has not been procured by devotion to Mr. Fox, or some other virtue on my part. If the King himself is indisposed towards me, I fear I could not make even His Majesty an exception. I never did any thing that should attract His Majes- ty's lightest censure. He never expressed or con- veyed any wish to me which had not been instant- ly and reverently obeyed. An incident occurred between seventeen and eighteen years since which I fear had made an impression to my disadvantage when it ought to have produced a contrary result. The incident was very extraordinary ; and my understanding instructs me that this is a fit occa- sion to refer to it. About nine o'clock at night, in the Addington administration, the late Sir John M^Mahpn called upon me. '■ I come, at this strange hour, by order of the Prince. His Royal Highness has been told that a meeting has taken place between Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt He has chosen you as an intelligencer, certain that you are the likeliest to know the fact and to tell the truth.' ' The truth then is, my dear M'Mahon, that I know nothing of the matter ; but I will enquire ; and faithfully report to his Royal Highness.' I went directly to Mr. Fox, then at the hotel in Berkely Square, and after the departure of Lord Fitzwih lianiy who came in at my heels and stopped an hour, was instructed in these words. * You must write to Carlton House and say that the Prince has been misinformed.* I did so, without loss of time. If that answer— the only one which good faith to Mr. Pitt admitted, has hurt me in the 51 present King's opinion, never was greater injus- tice ; for I was not, myself, undeceived till the 24th day of January, 1806— the day after Mr. Pitts death — as before stated. I now have done. Mr. Bennet, without offence or injury from me, has proved himself my deadliest enemy. It is in his power to repair it in some degree, to- morrow — at the meeting of the House of Com- mons. I recollect that Mr. Bennett came over one day from Walton to St. Ann's Hill, accompanied by Lord Er shine. Having avoided all intemperance throughout this pamphlet, I will finish it with quoting, for Mr. Bennett's guidance, the most beautiful sentence that ever fell from the lips of that eloquent Peer. Speaking of Lord Mansfield^ in the Court of King's Bench about 20 years since, Lord Erskine said, * Boundless as my admi- ration always was of that illustrious judge, I never surveyed him with so much reverence, as when I have seen him, upon that bench — sitting in judg- ment upon his own imperfections/ If Mr. Ben- nett regards his universal error respecting me as an imperfection — I trust, the example of Lord Mansfield will not be lost upon him. DENIS O'BRYEN. 21, Craven* Street, November the 22nd, 1 820. P. S. Though 1 trust that this pamphlet contains a suf- ficiency for my obvious purpose, I assure the reader that I have not put forth HALF MY STRENGTH. APPENDIX.— No. 1 (Copy.) The late Right Honourable William Windham to Mr, O'Bryen. ' October gth, 1806. ' Dear Sir, 4 When I tell you that I received your letter at Norwich, and that I am now in my third journey since that time, you will not wonder, that I should have been obliged to delay my answer longer than I could wish. As so much of your letter related to an election, I may say that to answer it in my circum- stances, was something like what Congreve describes, « writing of a storm in a storm.' My answer in the first instance must have all the uncertainty that belongs to a total ignorance on my part of the nature of the object, and of the fact of its being at my disposal ; but you will feel moreover that upon the same principle on which our departed friend was so anxious to serve you, there must be many, whose wishes, and perhaps wants, I must feel myself not inclined merely, but bound to attend to ; and the opportunities which I have had or am likely to have for that purpose, are not such as will admit my passing over any that may for some time come into my power. 1 No one will be more ready to feel the force of this principle than yourself, and you will as easily conceive that the operation of it may not be consistent with my indulging in this instance, either my wishes towards you personally, or the respect I should feel for the wishes of our late friend. ' It may not, however, be very necessary, at the present moment, to adjust nicely the proportion of the considerations that might weigh on one side or the other, the fact first to be ascertained will be, whether the place, whatever may be its value, is at my disposal, and whether it be compatible with the one which you at present have, and which Lord Howick was willing to hope was far from an unprofitable one. I can only say in the mean time, that it will not be from want of good wishes personally to yourself, or of a sense of those sentiments, which you have seemed at different times to manifest towards me, if in the present, or in any other instance, I should forbear opportunities, where it might seem to be in my power to be of service to you. ' I am, dear Sir, ' Your very obedient and faithful humble servant, • W. WINDHAM/ a LI No. 2. (Copt.) Mr. O'Bryen to the Right Honourable William Windham. '> Craven Street, October, llM, 180(5. 'Dear Sir, ' I return to you my thanks for the honour and the favour of your letter, dated the 9th instant, which has just been delivered here. I persuade myself that there is a sentiment of good will towards me, pervading every part of the letter 5 and that persuasion both soothes and flatters me. No doubt you have abundance of clients for the widest range of your possible patronage. Even if I had, what I do not in the least pretend to, a right of importuning you, your conversation never coped with one less likely to push it, than your present correspondent. Indeed, I am the victim of quite a contrary turn of mind. The object of my application was suggested to me by a kind- hearted stranger. In whose gift it lay I knew not j but took the liberty of thinking that whoever had the disposal of it might not deem it nnadvisable to oblige me, either in arelation purely personal, or generally, in relation to the Government as it stands. That the incumbency of serving me might lie more in other quarters, I am not disposed to contest 3 but this admission does not exclude, as I humbly conceive, the possible co-existence of claims on my part, of duties to me from, the surviving members of the administration. When Mr. Fox characterized me as a man with whom ' he could permit no competition on the score of merits, as one, in favour of whose merits he could sign a charte blanche, the merits to which he alluded were public and political. Personal affection he might have had from me, perhaps in as great a proportion as one breast ever felt for, or imparted to, another ; but it most clearly was to my exertions in favour of the party I was con- nected with that he, chiefly, adverted, when he thus described me. Are those exertions matters of privacy ? r May I, my dear Sir (the question not implying any dissent from the general reasonings or distinctions of your letter, and the question being put to you, only, plurally, as a member of the Cabinet) may I, then, with all becoming submission, ask,whether my services are so entirely a secret, my utilities so exclusively confined to one person, that the tomb which contains his ashes is the proper boundary of my hopes ? * There are many peculiarities in my misfortune, and not one of the least is, that unless I speak of myself I fear I shall want a historian. Against my will, and against the rules of Ill taite, then, am I compelled to a certain portion of egotism, which I feel quite sure you will think the situation I am in abundantly excuses. ' Will it sound extravagant, when I venture to telFyou, that I pretend to nothing less than this, that I have done more to serve the persons constituting the present cabinet— that I have done more to produce a general conviction that the public salvation depended upon their being put at the head of the government, then all the persons provided for, by all the ministers, since the period of their kissing hands ! ! Than ALL J ALL PUT TOGETHER- 6 You are a man of a benevolent mind, and the whole world knows you to be amongst the ablest of mankind. Never did you perform an act of greater charity, than it will be to con- vince me that I am in a delusion up^n this point. ' The 24 years' labour that preceded the junction of Mr. Fox and of Lord Grenville shall go for nothing. The beginning of that interval was marked by a circumstance which your memory will retrace, viz. that a work of mine had been attributed to you, as it had also been to Mr. Fox, (' Garth did not write his own dispensary') a work which was the occasion to me of the additional honour of my having declined the offer of a provision (in youth and in want) from the very ministers I opposed. From the death of Lord Rockingham to the sessions of parliament in 1804, when Mr. Pitt returned to power, all this period, in every year of which I did more than half a dozen of the most active of my fellow labourers, shall go as a perfect blank in this discussion. In reference to a part of the present ministers, it should be such. I shall therefore speak only of those events which contributed to make those ministers what they now are. ' The first epoch was the trial of strength, upon Mr. Pitt's Parish bill. I believe it may happen, that you know more than I do, how /was selected as the most dextrous promulger of that letter to Mr. Pitt, which reflected so much honour upon the wisdom of Lord Grenville. It was thought at the time, to have had great effect in the debate and the division ; having been published on the same day. The tenth report became the next topic of popular interest. How that business was handled, though at that time you did not come much to Budd's, you I believe are not ignorant. On the night of the Qth of April, 1805, the night after the vote against Lord Melville, Mr. Fox going to St. Ann's Hill the next day for the recess, said to me — ' O'B pray stir the country if you can. We could work with double effect, within doors, if we are well supported without.* ' Whilst you were all in the midst of your rural enjoyment! during the rece3s, I was at the anvil ; and so effectually did I a 2 IV ' stir the country' that I will venture to say the uniformity of the sensation never was equalled. Of my toil you will form some guess, when you learn that excepting the address to the king from Westminster, which was written by Mr. Fox; the Middlesex resolutions which were written by Mr. Creevy ; a part of one resolution which was worded in a note to me, by the Duke of Northumberland, every line of every resolu- tion, petition to the House of Commons, and address to the King, (though all sufficiently varied not to betray their com- mon origin) from the City of London, from Westminster, from Middlesex, and from the borough of Southwaik, were all written by me. I must add to the exceptions two resolutions at the borough meeting, which were foisted in, foolishly and fraudulently, (by an intrigue of Major Cartwright's with Mr. Shipley of the borough) respecting parliamentary reform. ' The country caught the example of the capital j and the expense of all these operations, which was guessed by many of our friends to exceed three thousand pounds, did not exceed 300/. ' I had not recovered the effects of these labours, when a new incident, the third coalition, demanded a renewal of efforts. ' With the train of thinking which I ventured to entertain upon that subject, it happens, that the repeated calls, with which your condescension honoured my humble roof, about this time twelvemonth, make you well acquainted. That I was right you well know : that I effectually strove to make the nation right, is no less true. In this work I had two able co-operators ; Mr. Cobbett and Mr. S of the Morning Chronicle. It is not to lessen their great merits, but merely to state a fact that I remark that both of these gentlemen were la- bouring in their vocation ; each being at the head of a produc- tive property, and each being professional gainers by what they wrote : whilst I, who had, at no period of my life, any interest or concern in any such publications, did all, for the benefit of the present ministers, and of him who is no more. So com- pletely was^the task accomplished, that by the time parliament met there existed but one opinion, out of the pale of the ministry, namely, that all was lost unless the opposition was called in. I am sure I need not remind you that in producing this conviction in the public mind, the present ministers had no more immediate agency, than so many of the Emperor of China's Mandarins. It is not that the present ministers would not have done the thing with transcendent powers ; but, parlia- ment not sitting, the opportunity did not exist. The business was done to their hands. Mr. Pitt's death intervened j and prevented any parliamentary struggle. * If I am correct in this statement (and if I am incorrect, taking the word in its widest sense, in any thing, my own sentence upon myself is, that every thing I urge may go for nothing) it is with confidence I leave you to judge whether the — Sic vos, no?i vobiSy fertis aratra loves has ever had a more signal illustration than in my person j with this difference in favour of the quadruped, that he has ' right store of provender assigned him,' whilst I, the biped ox, in case this appeal, which has nothing but its truth and justice to recommend it, should fail, am likely to be in nearly the circum- stances of the luckless wight who had nothing to soothe him in his disappointments but to ' Content himself with ends of verses * And sayings of philosophers !' ' Sometimes it is unaccountable to me, that upon the mere score of interest, I should not be a little more in the thoughts of those whom I have served. ' Fifty-one, to be sure, would be * too late a week' to begin the world anew — a sad time to set out in search of friends and fortune j yet this, my age, is not a period at which the powers of either mind or body usually forsake men j and if it should happen, as I, without the slightest fear of contradiction, con- tend to be the fact, that I rendered more service to the present ministry, during their political adversity, than all those upon whom their favor has shone, since their sun has been in the meridian, the singularity of my destiny will not be disputed. I am aware of the intoxicating effect of human power upon human frailty — that success is apt to forget that ill times ever existed or may come again — that c benefits conferred' do not always ensure a remembrance of the benefactor. Though I am well instructed in the truth of these positions, and know that they are older than Agamemnon j yet they are only general positions, — having, like other generalities, their limita- tions and exceptions. — And if I were to pick out of the mass of the world certain individuals whose conduct I should assure myself would be a contradiction to these rules, so unflattering to our common nature, those individuals would, undoubtedly, be found in the present ministry. The present ministry have refused no request of mine. During the life of Mr. Fox it would not have squared with my notion of fitness to say any thing of my situation to any of his colleagues. Even to him; since the 2^th of February last, the sum of my application respecting my pretensions, consists in one note of a few lines.— The letter from me to Lord Ho wick, respecting the cause of this correspondence, which his Lordship was so good as to convey to you, is the first and last request which I have made to the VI present ministers. I am not complaining of either the living or the dead j nor shall any lot that may befal me, nor any provo- cation from any quarter, ever tempt me to do other than exalt, as far as I can, the name and the fame of him whom, of the whole male creation, I loved next to heaven. As your obliging answer to my letter afforded me the opportunity of making some statement of my case, my discretion suggests to me that I ought not to omit it. But you would misunderstand me greatly, if you thought that this letter is levelled exclusively at you ; or mat I am capable of being an encroacher upon your capacities to serve me, the exertion of those capacities being accompanied with the slightest reluctance. Such a course on my part, would, I hope, be unnecessary j and, indeed, I have no doubt it would be so, both from what I know and what I have heard. ' What I have heard is this. That Lord Lauderdale, some months since, stated to Lord Grenville mat Mr. Fox's mind was uneasy on account of my situation ; and that Lord Gren- ville was so good as to reply, that the thing should be attended to as soon as possible. What I know is, that when Lord Howick gave me the office at the Cape, his Lordship added— ' Lord Grenville has, at present, nothing to offer you j when he has you will have it.' — The inference which I draw from both" these circumstances, rescues me from being, what, with- out these circumstances, I hope I should not be, an unrea- sonable or irksome supplicant, in any quarter. ' This is the place proper for me to say a few words respecting the Marshalship of the Vice Admiralty Court at the Cape, in reply to your remark upon that office.* ' Lord Howick knows, full well, that I feel his kindness as I ought ; and wants no additional proof of my attachment and respect for him. It is not to lessen the merit of the noble donor, that, I observe that even his Lordship's good will cannot make the office better than its nature admits. The true character of this office is this — The bad of it, is certain, the good, at best, but contingent. — In peace it is nothing. — In war, it is doubtful. What it is in war, may not, here, be possible to ascertain 5 but not so the negative. What it is not, I have col- lected with a non-consoling accuracy. ' There is a sister but superior office in the same court, that of Registrar, the produce of which, by the kindness of the gen- tleman who held it, all the time the Cape was in our hands, I have been able to make out j and have, confidentially, imparted to • See my answer to the Committee on Sinecures, re- specting this my office, in Appendix No. 5, page xx. vu Lord Howick. From this datum, the result is, that, if the office of Marshal, inferior, in every way, to the Registrar, were equal to the latter in emolument, my prospect is quite desperate of getting rid of the burthens that are upon me, even without applying one shilling of its income to the purposes of subsist- ence, though the present war should last as long as the Peloponnesian. '.Now, as to these burthens ; the grand source of all my soli- citude. ■ 1 am perhaps, the most signal, perhaps the only instance, of a man struggling through a life of difficulties, growing with the growth of every day, who, without Parliamentary protec- tion, has preserved his freedom, and never lost his little foot- ing.- — The art by which I have achieved this wonder, to me, has always been easy.— It consisted in this : in never deviating from the truth 5 and in putting it out of any man's power to say I deceived him. Never were creditors more kind than mine to me : — never was debtor more candid than I to them. At three epochs in the last eight years have the general body of my creditors granted to me three suspensions of all claims. The two last meetings, in 1801 and 1804, were attended by the present Attorney General in my behalf, ' as he's used, without a fee/ Though that learned and excellent person's kindness to me required no spur, he had the written request and authority of Mr. Fox, to state from him, to my creditors, his wish and his hope upon the occasion. The Attorney Gene- ral gave them no expectation, except in the event of a change of ministry. — The change has taken place 3 and the change having taken place, I own, with tremor, that my mind, though fertile of honest expedients in a condition of fortune from which your happier stars have always kept you in ignorance, suggests to me no safety, upon having nothing else to say to my generous creditors at the expiration of the third license, (now within a few months,) but to relate to them the Status quo of my present fortune. ' I have now finished my letter. ' I am well aware of the value of your time, and the time of those into whose hands a sentiment of kindness to me might prompt you to put these sheets for perusal. I feel all the incon- venience of the length into which I have been compelled to go j yet, without danger to the representation which I think it right to give of my situation, I know not where I could indulge myself with any abridgment ; and, as the diffusion ap- pears to me a matter of necessity, I take the liberty of relying upon that good natured consideration of which I have seen so many marks in your conduct and character, that you will excuse what I think unavoidable. Vlll ' All that remains for me is to say, that the absence of a just sensibility to attention from any quarter shall never be found among the defects of him who has the honor of truly sub- scribing himself, ' Dear Sir, • Your ever most faithful Servant, < D. O'Bryen/ * Postcript, October 15. ' The above letter has been written these four days. As my hand-writing is not the most legible, 1 thought it might a little reconcile its great length to have the letter copied in a tempting character j and, as from its nature I could not em- ploy a stranger, I was obliged to wait till this day before I met with our late clerk at Budd's, whom I know I can trust.' No. 3. (Copy.) Mr. O'Bryen to the Right Honourable W. Windham. 1 Craven Street, March the I0th,1801i 'Dear Sir, ' The manner almost as much as even the matter, of the few words that dropped from you this evening occasions to you the unwillingly given trouble of this letter. ■ It is in the very genius of hope that it will often exist in spite of reason j but in my case, reason is the base and sole foundation of my hope. Whatever be the witcheries of that seducing emotion, how is it possible that I should fail to cherish not merely hope, but well-considered, rational expectation ? * May I take the liberty of re-stating to you the grounds on which my mind has reposed itself. ' ] st. The words of Lord Howick to me j ' Lord Grenville has, at present, nothing to give you j when he has you will have it.' ' If these plain words wanted illustration, the time of their delivery is better than a thousand expositors. They were spo- ken on the twelfth day of last August, the very day after his Lordship nominated me to the office at the Cape, and when I was in the very act of returning thanks for it. ' 2dly. The answer of Lord Grenville to Lord Lauderdale's application $ viz. ' That Mr. Fox's mind should be freed from uneasiness on the score of Mr. O'Bryen, as soon as possible.' 1 3dly. That my letter to you of last October, containing a statement of my pretensions, founded in part upon their intrin- sic justice, and in part upon the two circumstances above re- IX ferred to, should remain unanswered to this moment ; — and, that the only time I came in contact with you (before this day) your only words were, * I know that I am in arrear with you ; but I hope I shan't be so long.* ' Now, my dear^Sir, how, under these circumstances, I should other than live in hope, I am persuaded you will admit to be inevitable. 'There is a fidelity due to the confidential impartments of even the bad ; but faith to the good, especially to those of the good whose kind interest in one's welfare additionally enforces moral obligation, this duty is so obvious that the vulgarest mind could hardly miss it. If, however, there exist any relative delicacies which render a free communication to me, hy letter, a matter of irksomeness to you, the difficulty is easily removed, as I am, of course, ready, at any moment, to attend your commands in person, * The circumstances can witness for me that, however anxious I have been to hear from you during the five months that have intervened since my reply to your letter of the gth of last October, I have not allowed my solicitude to interfere with your convenience. c I have the honour to remain, < Dear Sir, • Your very faithful obedient Servant, ■ D. O'Bryen.' APPENDIX— No. 2. The three documents contained in this Appendix comprehend the whole of what I have written, since the libellous ac- count in the Times and Chronicle, of the 10th of October, (1820,) and the courteous commentary of Mr. Bennett on the 17th of the same month. I. ' To the EDITOR of the MORNING CHRONICLE. * Sir, '.Commencing with the close of my short letter in this day's Morning Post, which letter I had contemplated for your Paper and for the Times, as the channels nearly concurring in the offen- sive terms to me of the Bow-street intelligence of Monday last, I repeat, from that communication, that — " I must, in candour, premise, that from the insertion of this paper, compromise is neither to be inferred nor implied, against my seeking redress for the outrage upon me, at law — whilst yet law sustains itself, in this country, in opposition to the united ma- chinations of incendiaries and cut-throat6." e I now proceed, with all possible brevity, to correct the false- hoods contained in the said account. '■ 1st. It is false, that I held or hold a sinecure place under the present Government. The only office which I possess is a colo- nial appointment conferred upon me more than fourteen years since by Lord Grey (when his Lordship was first Lord of the Ad- miralty) at the instance of Mr. Fox. 4 2d. It is false, that I am a writer for a certain Morning Paper. Were I such, I should not offer apology or explanation for such a disposition of myself. The fact, however, is, that, although in the course of my life, an occasional correspondent, like thou- sands of others, of several Papers- (the Chronicle and Times in- cluded) I never had either property, management, engagement, employment, or concern in any Newspaper, since the hour of my birth. ' 3d. It is false, that distinguished characters, connected with the Ministerial Press are in habits of meeting at my house. Upon the most accurate retrospect of which my memory is capable, I do not recollect any gentleman, now connected with any possible Paper, to have been inside my threshold for the last twelve months. Such an incident may have occurred, as there are gen- tlemen in that line of avocation whom I know and highly es- teem j but I have not the slightest remembrance of such a visitor, for a full year past. ' 4th. That Pearson and Vicltery were refused admittance by the servant happens to be fact, though found in the said state- ment } but the complexion given to that refusal is as false as the three first heads. The truth is, that I am very much annoyed by applicants, in real or pretended want j and that I have, dur- ing my 42 years' residence in this street, been obliged, perhaps 42 scores of times, to threaten my servants with dismissal for receiving begging letters and admitting strangers. It is to the discipline thence arising, coupled with seeking for a name un- known to those servants as a male visitant, that they refused to open the door. The instant that I, who was getting out of bed, learnt the name and object of Vickery, eveiy part of the house was directly submitted to his search. I shall not add another word. < DENIS O'BRYEN/ 21, Craven-street, October the l lth, 1820. 2. TO THE EDITOR OF 1 21, Craven- Street, Oct. 18, 1820. ' Sib,— If I were at this moment in fulness of health, a cor- rection of the monstrous misrepresentations regarding me which XI took place last night, in more than one quarter, would be no slight call upon my exertions. How much more serious is my task in my present circumstances ! Whether a more cruel hardship can be inflicted, than to make one man answerable for another's acts, to which he has been no party, is a point which may be safely submitted to just minds. In my present state, however, I shall confine myself, at this moment, to a single sample of this dreadful wrong. ' I have been charged by Mr. H. G. Bennett as the author of certain Letters to, and against, Lord Fitzwilliam. Of the letters alluded to (those I presume, of Hambden and Aris- tides, in the Morning Post,) I really know no more than does my assailant, or the man who has been in the grave thousands of years before my assailant was born. What I have written respecting Lord Fitzwilliam is, verbatim, what is at the bottom of this letter — a printed slip of the original essay (dated and published on the 27 th day of last October (18 1 9) in the MorningPost) serving for the compositor's copy in this reprint of the article. I am aware of the present pressure upon news- papers j but still, I supplicate its insertion from every Editor in whose breast the principles of fairness are not extinct— keeping in mind Mr. Bennett's attack upon me, relatively to Lord Fitzwilliam. ' Such, and only such, is the style in which I have ever men- tioned and shall ever mention the name of Lord Fitzwilliam —the dimidium animce of Charles Fox. So few, alas, of Mr. Fox's real friends (usually engaging in House of Commons debates) are spared by the devourer Death, that my wonder is the less, at seeing myself, his nearly thirty years bosom ad- herent (not the least faithful nor the most interested— tried by all the tests which can put sincerity to the proof) abandoned ' in my utmost need,' to the animadversions of Mr. Hume, and Mr. Bennett— without a tittle of evidence against me. If I live, I shall re-publish every article that I have written since the death of Mr. Fox, with my name in the title page, and defy any candid critic to find in any one of them either lie or libel— dereliction of principle or oblivion of friendship. Such will be my answer to Mr. Bennett's charge of apostacy. What further course I may pursue towards redress for this outrage will depend upon the hereafter. ' Exhausted as I am, there is another point on which I must say a word. Mr. Bennett is described as having, by impli- cation, intimated that I had called the Queen a hag! I never so called her Majesty, nor any woman, since I was born. In the Essay to which allusion is made, the word hag is indeed in- troduced, but introduced quite ironically — with a meaning the exact reverse of what is imputed to it by Mr. Bennett— and in- xii tended only to scout the philosophy which contemplated 52 as an age past female frailty. Almost all that ha9 appeared re- specting a Bow-street warrant, 3rc. is erroneous. Until the re- covery of my health shall enable me to shape my course, I beg a suspension of judgment, and a distrust of all reports regarding me. ' I am, Sir, 8cc. ' DENIS O'BRYEN.' " DISMISSAL OF LORD FITZWILLIAM. " The earth that bears him bears not a nobler Gentleman than the Earl of Fitzwilliam. With perhaps more of what may be termed the moral trade-wind in his temper than Lord Eoremokt, Lord Fitzwilliam, in princely munificence, is full brother to that Nobleman : a knowledge of whose care- fully concealed generosities would, by their example, be a be- nefit to mankind. More than twenty-five years since, the late Mr. Hare (himself an assemblage of whatever is most delightful in a social being) detailed to the writer of this article, sum by sum, no less than 150,0001. given by Lord Egremont in mere largesses— one hundred and fifty thousand founds ! twenty-Jive years since ! And if the author were at liberty to state some instances of the Noble Lord's beneficence, only within the last two years, which accident has brought to his own knowledge, the reader's eyes, like the eyes of the writer (though a total stranger to Lord Egremont,) would overflow, at this casual tribute to a heart whose bounty is clogged with no other condition than that of— secresy. " In acts more or less of this complexion has passed the entire life of Lord Fitzwilliam. ' Fitz/ said Charles Fox (in a letter to the person who is my authority), ( Fitzwilliam is not only the most generous, but he is much about the most amiable of the race of man.' Existence is not possessed by any mortal, to whom more appropriately than to that Noble Earl, may be applied the celebrated line of Pope upon the famous Bishop of Cloyne. Changing Berkeley into Wentworth, pre- serves the poetry, and exhibits the Noble Lord as truly as in a mirror. * To Wentworth, every virtue under Heaven,' " As faithfully then, as if he were at his account before the throne of that same Heaven, does the writer hereof de- clare, that in the dismissal of this aggregate of ' every virtue under Heaven* from his Yorkshire Lieutenancy, he discerns the certain safety of English freedom. That single act Xlll assures the conservation of the British Constitution— and not to have done that act would, in the writer's most reflex judg- ment, have been all but an impeachable crime in the Govern- ment. To leave the modelling and command of a regiment, which regiment may be called out to-morrow in the disturbed districts — to continue all the powers civil and military, of a Lord Lieutenant in the Earl Fitzwilliam, under all the cir- cumstances of the case (which circumstances will be matter for future consideration) would, in the Government, have been setting an example pregnant with possible ruin, in a crisis when universal duty interdicted any measure, active or passive, hazard- ous of universal security. " It is the acknowledged excellence of Lord Fitzwilliam'^ character which best illustrates his removal. Ne Catoni quidem credendum est. Not even to Cato should too much be trusted. The British Constitution is a stake not to be rested upon com- plaisance, even to Lord Fitzwilliam : although he be a man whose very and only alloy has its root in a virtue. What is that alloy ? — excess of party feeling. Party feeling, within reasonable limits, is a virtue 5 but, e be not virtuous over-much.* * For virtue's self might too much zeal be had ; The worst of madmen is a saint inn mad.' <( Party saintship having made Lord Fitzwilliam a pro- moter and a partaker of the Yorkshire Meeting and Resolu- tions , the Government became divested of all discretion.— When the Government saw the honourably notorious opponent of all the phrenzies going under the name of Parliamentary Reform — when the Government saw the very person in whom (in 1 794, under an alarm which to the danger of the present moment was a comparative bugbear,) the patriot prevailed over the partizan ; when they saw the identical legislator who abandoned the man he loved, and joined the man whose whole anterior life he had resisted, merely from the impulse of public duty j when the Government saw the spotless, the upright, the praised and honoured Earl of Fitzwilliam confederating in manoeuvres which preferred party objects to national safety ; when this miraculous change appeared, in palpable word and deed, to their surprised senses, what else but treachery to their trust would have been the avoidable loss of a single day to the Ministers, in depriving even that Noble Lord of a public function, (he unrebuked retention of which would, by its impunity, have served only as a special invitation to others of a less unexcep- tionable description than Lord Fitzwilliam — to go much far- ther than his Lordship ?" XIV 3. The following advertisement will show that my appeal to every publisher, of Mr, H. G. Bennett's speech ; ' in whose breast the principles of fairness were not extinct, failed of any im- pression upon more than four Editors, out of a corps which is scarcely numeral le I ! * Although writing by dictation, and from my bed, I can- not permit even a single day to pass, without returning, in this most public manner (preferably by advertisement), my indelible thanks to The Morning Chronicle, for inserting (though piecemeal), yesterday and the day before, my letter, dated the 1 8th instant, together with its extract respecting Lord Fitzwilliam. A like expression of my deep obligation, for the like reason, is, in due measure, hereby most sincerely offered to The Courier, and to The New Times, notwithstanding the delay, in the latter Journal, of the extract, the re-printing of which, in the other Jonmals mentioned, has, in the intervening 24 hours, produced alleviations to the most wronged and oppressed of mankind. Excepting The Sun, in which paper my article of the 18th first appeared and the Morning Advertiser, I am not aware that my gratitude can embrace a single quarter beyond those just named. To those publications will be the comfort of not having denied the freedom of the press to one of its warmest advocates -, whilst for that accord, so honourable to their generous justice, my pro- found sense can only terminate with my existence. ' Well aware of the proneness of die popular mind to the wrong side of every question ; and that reasoning might as well be ad- dressed to the roaring ocean as to the crowd till calm succeeds the tempest, I make neither reply, rejoinder, nor remark upon any thing that has been said, or written against me, either in, or out of Parliament — at present. I never was a courter of that crowd — not even in the 26 years, during which I stood upon a hustings at Covent-garden — my books having told me that the most assidu- ous conciliators of the multitude have generally been the worst men in all ages and nations. The proper public of a private citizen is his own circle ; and, even of that circle the favour of the frivo- lous is not worth possessing. Not so the good will and the good word of the considerate and the virtuous. To those if life is spared to me, I shall demonstrate my title. In Professor Ri- chardson's essay upon Hamlet, after an eulogy upon the fine qua- lities of that character (which I forbear repeating, because I ar- rogate no portion of the encomium to myself) , the commentator adds, " but all these qualities did not save him from being hated, persecuted and destroyed !" Destroyed I yet am not; still, however (his catastrophe apart), all the sufferings of Hamlet are delights — in comparison with the inflictions visited upon me. 21, Craven-street, Oct. 22, 1820. ' DENIS O'BKYEN.' XV APPENDIX.— No. 3. I have surmised that the marked Bennettism of the news- papers to me may in some degree refer to the concluding para- graph of the following article of my writing, which appeared in the Morning Post of the 6th of last September (1820,) and which I have taken some pains to circulate among the Peers. THE QUEEN. 1 Immodest words admit of no defence, For, want of decency is want of sense.' Roscommon. * Subscribing implicitly to the maxim of the Noble author of my motto, I should,^?' myself, be wholly at a loss for any colourable justification in transgressing against it. I perceived, however, that an article of mine, under my present initial, which appeared in this paper on Saturday se'nnight (the 26th ult.) had been taunted by the Morning Chronicle (of the 28th) as ' commenting on the evidence (meaning in the House of Lords) in language which that paper could not soil its pages with repeating. 1 ' If it were so it were a grievous fault ;' and grievously, yet unfeignedly should I kiss the rod of even such a censor, were my article fairly objectionable on the score pre- tended. The sentiment delivered by Lord Liverpool in Tuesday's debate, regarding the second cross-examination— is, indeed, a sentiment worthy of being engraved in gold, viz. that ' he should never want the courage or the candour to surrender an opinion when convinced of its error.' In humble imitation of such an example, I should deem it a graceless perversion of any faculty with which the Almighty may have endued me, to shew that worst of all fopperies, the foppery of intellect, in any pertinacity respecting a subject so entirely ephemeral as the trifle which has been gravely stigmatised by the decorous Chronicle. ' Illness, chiefly, and extreme occupation, have prevented my reading the print of the article in question till this day. As- terisks, I see, are put in the place of one line in my copy. I assure my good friend, the Editor of this Journal, that it was not my lubricity he was pruning in that substitution. He was chastening the text of that identical English classic who is deservedly designated ' the moral poet.' Endeavouring to ex- pose the philosophy of the ' Times' newspaper (a philosophy wholly novel as to the nature of woman), the omitted line was only a transposition of ' No pulse that riots, and no blood that glows.' XVI In the same author, by the way, is to be found a couplet, which would almost seem to have anticipated the Morning Chronicle s false gallop of delicacy. • Before her eyes a handkerchief she spread, * To hide the flood of tears — she did not shed.' Judging, after more than a week's interlapse, in the coolness of reflection not in the vividness of writing, I remain to be convinced, that there is one sentence, or half a sentence, or two words, in the whole essay, which prudery itself would erase. There is, indeed, one word, which, though only prompted by playfulness, if the article were republished I would myself, by choice, omit — one word — no more. It is to the polluting career now under universal notice, that every evil is to be ascribed. When the hypocrisy of the Chronicle — when the lies of the Times — ' lies like the fathers that beget them as gross as a mountain,' and nearly as numerous as their paragraphs— when all these shall be ingulphed in the oblivious pool, then will British husbands and British parents deeply and loudly curse the person who has so contrived her external conduct (granting, for argument, that she may be essentially guiltless) as to render it impossible to discuss her history without defilement to her sex. ' In respect to the Chronicle's imputation of my improper language being in ' a commentary upon the evidence,* that — that, (a very feather in the cap of the Chronicle) is no more nor less than a mere, sheer, falsehood. I pretend to know my duty to any possible Judicature much too well for falling into any such delinquency as commenting upon evidence pending a trial. And here I cannot avoid supplicating the House of Lords to be aware that, one of the first, one of the greatest, dearest, most prized rights born of, and nourished by, the English Constitution, rests at this juncture entirely upon their Lordships* tutelage. ' Bring him before us,' said Judge Bulleu, ' and you shall see how we will dispose of him.' May an humble man, even though writing anonymously, beseech the attention of that illustrious House to the matter of the next paragraph ? ' In May 1798, Mr. Caprl Loft (then resident in Suffolk as I trust he still is in health and happiness) received a letter from a friend of his in Kent ; stating, that a certain Gentleman in his neighbourhood busied himself in prejudicing some of the persons, impannelled for the Jury on the State trial, at Maid- stone, in that month, of Mr. Arthur O'Connor and of other prisoners, then charged with high treason. Mr. Loft made a journey to Maidstone, and apprised the Counsel for the prison- XV11 ers of the constructive obstruction just referred to. Before a single name was called for the Jury, complaint was laid before the Court, by, (as nearly as memory serves me at a distance of twenty-two years,) the present Lord Chief Justice of the Com- mon Pleas, or the Master of the Rolls, regarding the irregula- rity mentioned in the letter to Mr. Loft. * Where is this person/ asked Judge Buller. * Not to be found, my Lord.' ' Well, we can't go after him j you bring him here, and you shall see how we will dispose of him.' The present Lord Chancellor and Lord Reddesdale were eye and ear witnesses of this occurrence. The Gentleman complained of took special care not to be seen in the county till the commission was dis- solved. Else, his loyalty overmuch would not have saved him from being laid by the heels. ' But, suppose the Gentleman so erring had, in a Maidstone newspaper, made it his daily task to accuse the witnesses of perjury — to anticipate the verdict with the utmost irreverence and contumacy — to pander to all the bad passions of the rab- ble—to stir up the besotted populace to a diurnal insult of the Judges in their way from the Court to their abodes — as the deliverer of Europe and his heroic comrade, who left his limb at Waterloo, have been regularly insulted by wretches whom the daily and weekly destroyers of the liberty of the Press auda- ciously denominate ' the people* — were such the conduct of the Gentleman alluded to by Mr. Loft's correspondent, what would ha?e been the exclamation, what the resolve, of Mr. Judge Buller and of his three co-Judges ? ! * Not the Kino is invested with a prerogative, not Lords nor Commons with a privilege, which does not exist for public purposes. For the sake of that public, I would, in due humi- lity, invoke the House of Peers, to spare a thought, even in their legislative pressure, upon the present deluge of never paralleled licentiousness. I would beseech that Noble House — for the conservation of that right, upon which so many other rights depend — of that right, from the use of which their purest delights are derived, in the perusal of those classic works of their country which drew their first breath from the right of publication without imprimatur — of that right under which so many of their own high order have immortalized their names— from { Noble Surrey* to the more poetically Noble Byron, in one line of literature j from Bacon to Bolingbroke in another line, and from Bolingbroke down to their own co-tempora- ries — for the desire of transmitting that paramount right, un- manned and uncrippled, to future ages — by all these reasons— by the generous motives and sublime animations which actuate elevated souls — by that solicitude for posterity which distin- b XV111 guishes an ethereal nature, (parental for present times, provi- dent for future) from a narrow-minded clod of earth (cupidity his end, and calumny his means), whose instincts will not allow him to look beyond the pelf within his gripe — for and by all these considerations, I would beseech that August Body not to leave upon record the fatal precedent of a suicidal oblivion of a holy trust $ but manfully to discharge the sacred duty which they owe to the liberty of the press 3 and, in a warrant- able exercise of their undoubted authority, to lend their powerful arm towards rescuing that foremost of civil blessings from its most deadly enemies, the mercenary crew who drive a sordid traffic upon its abuse — utterly destitute of any care concerning it-— c if it lasts their time* September the 4th, 1820. N. APPENDIX.— No. 4. 1. Sir Home PopharrCs Attestation. * Mr. Denis O'Bryen having given to me a copy of his letter to Mr. Windham, dated in October 1806, (which letter, though directed to Mr. Windham, was explained by Mr. O'Bryen to have been aimed generally at the ministerial sur- vivors of Mr. Fox) having learnt from Mr, O'Bryen that his requests for an answer to that application (which were alleged to have been made repeatedly during the six months that inter- vened before the close of the late government) produced none j the silence of Mr. Windham (construed by Mr. O'Bryen into sentiments neither unkind nor uncourteous to him) accompanied by some other very intelligible indications, appearing not to have left the least doubt in Mr. O'Bryen's mind of the abso- lute disfavour towards him of the late ministry ; feeling to the quick the deplorable state of Mr. O'Bryen's affairs, at such a time of life as his j under all these circumstances I exercised my own discretion, with a view to the interests of a man whom I had known since I was a youth, and for whose welfare I am most anxious. ' As I have no doubt that the subject of a private conversation in reference to Mr. O'Bryen, stated to have recently passed in the House of Commons, had its origin in a conduct on my part dictated by the considerations which I have just described, 1 feel it incumbent on me to declare, as I do hereby, upon my honour, XIX < That I have most strenuously advised Mr. O'Bryen to pursue what appeared to me the most advantageous course possible in his situation 5 that it is in the fullest conviction I affirm, that the adoption, by Mr. O'Bryen, of such my earnest advice, would have changed the character of his fortune, brightened his pros- pects, lessened the load of his embarrassments, and rescued his mind from the vexation inseparable from the pressure of his difficulties 5 but that ail my intreaties have hitherto proved fruitless. That I have, more especially since the appearance of Faustus and Aristides in the Morning Post, re-urged, re-im- portuned, and re-supplicated Mr. O'Bryen, in every shape and mode, by letter and personally, to the line of conduct which I before recommended ; and that it is with deep concern I declare that I have done so in vain. • HOME POPHAM.' Charles Street, St. James's, July I8O9. Compared by me the 17 th of July, I8O9. No. 3, Gray's-Inn Square. J. PALMER. Letter of the Lord Chief Commissioner Adam, franked from Wohourn the 18£A of July, I8O9, referring to Sir Home Popham's attestation. < Dear O'Bryen, e Our long repast made me take a nap here on Sunday, after dinner,— but yesterday I rode fifteen miles, and danced till three in the morning, — -the Duchess gave a most charming fete at her Thornery. I have ruminated much on our very interesting conversation ; and although the unvaried tissue of uprightness which I have experienced in you, rendered me as certain when I heard the calumny, of its falsehood, as I am now j yet there is a satisfaction in having had my belief con- firmed. Here is a beautiful day ; I am going to dine at three o'clock with all the farmers, and from five till dark saunter through the woods, leaving the great to their turtle and Champagne. ' Your's ever, W. Adam/ XX APPENDIX.— No. 5. (Copy.) Precept from the Committee on Sinecures. 1 House of Commons, March 25th, 1811. ' I am directed by the Committee on Sinecure Offices to re- quest your answer to the following questions. (Signed) ' Henry Martin, Chairman. To Denis O'Bryen, Esq., Marshal of the Vice Admiralty Court at the Cape. Mr. D. O'bryen's Answer. ' Craven Street, March 3 1st, 1811. • In answer to the precept of the Committee, conveyed to my house on the 26th instant, but not received by me for some time after, I have the honour of replying, That *,After dedicating, according to the example of many among the best and brightest names in English annals, near thirty years to political studies and operations, in one of those confe- deracies which the genius of a free State necessarily generates $ and without the existence of which no state ever was or ever will be free j after having, upon numberless occasions, vindicated the British Constitution, never forgetting, in the warmestardour for the rights of the people, those great trusts, the rights of the Crown, (labours, of which I am not without hope of leaving memorials that may, without disrepute to his ashes, survive the labourer j) never apprehending that such exercises or any eventual rewards that might follow the fidelity and purity of their practice, would be liable to degradation or disparagement by ex post facto theories, the fashion of which, in my humble judgment, tends to institute the falsest standard of merit, to deter all who are not fortune's favorites from the cultivation of pursuits, heretofore deemed liberal and laud- able j and, by consequence, to throw the powers and the cares of Government into the hands of those whom neither history nor philosophy shows to be uniformly the best adapted to its duties, namely, the fat-pursed, or the first-born j— the whole of my adult life having been devoted to such courses, I re- ceived in 1806, towards a remuneration, the Office of Marshal of the Vice Admiralty Court at the Cape : and though I never foresaw that I should be over-hauled for my treasures thence arising, I proceed, in respectful obedience to the commands of the Committee, to give true answers to their several questions. XXI Questions. 1 What is the nature of the office of Marshal of the Vice Admiralty Court at the Cape of Good Hope? * Do you perform any, and what part, of the duties of that office in person ? ' What is the amount of the Salary and emolu- ments of your office as received by yourself, or by your Deputy ? I. Answers, * The nature of the office is the execution, under the Vice Admiralty Court at theCape^ of the function sap- pertaining to the Marshalship of the Admiralty Court in Doctors' Com- mons. Except in the miniature of a Colonial Court compared with the magnitude of the Superior Court in this Country, the duties (which are various and important) had been generally the same. II. * I perform none of the duties in person. My health, my time of life, and my private affairs not ad- mitting of my personal execution of my office j I availed myself of the power, expressly vested in me by my patent, of providing a capa- ble deputy ; diminishing my own possible gains by a proportionate remuneration to my substitute. III. ' I never have, nor has my Deputy to my knowledge, received one shil- ling under the name of salary. No salary is annexed to the office, and I understand that in peace it is not worth one farthing — the amount of all my emoluments, actually received by myself from my ap- pointment in August 1806 to the present hour (being near five years) is no less than 2193Z. l6s. 3d. As my allowance to my Deputy is one third of the profits, a sum equal to one half of the said 21 93/. l6s. 3d. has been retained for himself by my Deputy. If, however, regulations which (unjustifiably I presume) have been introduced into the Court for some time, had existed during the whole time of ray appointment, the xxn * From what sources do the Salary and emolu- ments of your office arise, as received by yourself, or by your Deputy ? said sum of 2ig3/. 16s. 3d. must have been pared down upwards of two thirds -, so that instead of the large gain of 21Q31. l6s. 3d. I should have received during the whole period (of 5 years) less than 700/. The rights and perquisites of which my office (contrary, as I am instructed, to the practice of all other Vice Admiralty Courts) has been stripped, have been claimed by my represen- tatives at the Cape. Whether any thing may come of that claim de- pends, st p*esent, upon the comforts of litigation. IV. ' The emoluments of my office, however exorbitant, arise, entirely, from naval captures — not a shilling comes from any other source. The sinecure quality of my appointment must now more than ever be obnox- ious to popular jealousy, inasmuch as the taking of the Mauritius and Bourbon being likely to make a Vice Admiralty Jurisdiction in that distant solitary sea, a court sine causa, my office necessarily becomes, in the most strict and literal sense of the designation, an office sine cura. ' By whom is your De- puty apppointcd, and by whom approved ? • Have you or your De- puty any custody of the public money or records ? ' My Deputy is appointed by my- self. In the nature of the thing it is probable that the Court would disapprove of an incompetent De- legate. VI, ' I am not aware that any such custody constitutes any part of the duties of ray office, with the excep- tion of a record of the office busi- XXlll VII. « Is any, and what se- * My Deputy gives security to me curity, given by yourself for a faithful execution of his depu- or by your Deputy ? tation. I have never been asked to give any security. If any had been required, I was, as I am, al- ways ready to give such, to any amount. (Signed) ' Denis O'Bryen.' Directed to the Committee on Sinecure Offices, or Henry Mar- tin, Esq. Chairman. APPENDIX.— No. 6. 'DISMISSAL OF LORD FITZWILLIAM.— No. 2/ ' This topic, so far from being exhausted, will on the meeting of parliament be as fresh as on the day of its occurrence. The spotless, and (excess of partyism out of the question) the universally irreproachable character of Lord Fitzwilliam, affords too much polemical picking to be thrown aside as a bare bone, by those who deem the crisis a good one for subduing the court—- when radicalism stalks abroad without simulation $ and Spencean Philanthropy (the vital spring of all mob move- ments) breaks through the disguises of her lamb-like votaries — when Reform of Parliament is discarded for Parliamentary annihilation ; hereditary Royalty denounced as a primary grievance 5 Republicanism avowed in the set terms of special pleading; and the constitutional impossibility asserted, as a given fact, that the actual Sovereign has forfeited the Crown — when the employers of the country are arraigned as usurpers ; the employee? proclaimed as their victims 5 and a servile struggle only, from mere precaution, not actually commenced — when Jesus Christ is proscribed as an impostor ; his morals, till the present era the stumbling block to infidelity, scouted as mockery 5 and his religion, the grand civilizer of England (leaving the sacred subject of his theology untouched) stigma- tised as a nursery of fraud, corruption, and tyranny. The candidates for government who seize such a juncture for ousting their antagonists, will scarcely fail to place the dispossession of such a man as Lord Fitzwilliam in the van of their ope- rations — the very frontispiece of their hostility. 1 That the high name of Lord Fitzwilliam served strongly to illustrate and decidedly to justify his removal, was a main point in the former number of this article, which has been de- XXIV • Iaycd by illness, but which, if continued, shall not, consciously to the author, interfere with, nor by reiteration impair, the arguments of other and abler writers. • Additional light is thrown upon this measure of Lord Liver- pool's Administration — by comparison with that of Mr. Pitt, in its removal of Lord Fitzwilliam's Noble Predecessor. The Newspapers, themselves mistaken, have misled the Public in regard to that transaction. The toast given by the Duke of Norfolk was not, totidem verbis ' the sovereignty of the people f. nor was the Whig Club the scene of the real toast. ' Avoiding a profitless discussion about the origin of govern- ment, the principle is here assumed, that whether incipiently from God or from the people, the present British frame of civil rule is both of and for the people. Entangled in no theory respecting divine right, the Mighty Act which ultimately placed the Crown of England upon the House of Brunswick, recognised the paramount value of hereditary royalty by making Jambs the First ' a stock and root of inheritance )' at the same moment that it practically asserted a supreme national faculty in a supreme national emergency. With a penal law upon the statute book against denying the competence of Par- liament to limit the Regal succession, the congruity does not easily present itself, how any individual of even the Royal Family could refuse to drink the sovereignty of the people in its English, constitutional sense. In this sense, its true sense, the toast is as distant from any thing rebellious or irreverent to the King, as the Convention, which associated the Prince of Orange with the lineal heiress of the throne, differs from the rabble of Jack Cade, of Lord George Gordon, or of Mr. Hunt. But, the very nature of events is sometimes changed by circumstances. The same proceeding becomes innoxious or offensive according to epochs and accompaniments. 'It is gracious towards the dead, and honourable to the living, that the nativities of Mr. Fox and of Mr. Pitt should still be celebrated by their surviving admirers. Such a tribute (not therefore the less a gangrene to putrid bosoms) is the free offering, of free minds, in a free state, to transcendent genius, even in two men who, like Aristides and Cymon before them, did not leave the means of defraying their respective funerals. Some unreflecting Foxites occasionally reproach the celebrators of Mr. Pitt's birthday as r owing obligation to that great Minister' — quite ignorant that the highest compliment is enve- loped in such an accusation. There is a saying attributed to the first Premier of the present reign, viz. that he never pro- vided for a supplicant without making one man ungrateful and twenty men discontented— a true and terrible picture of base XXV mankind — much the more so that the dictum is in reality older by thousands of years than the Duke of Newcastle. Were the allegation founded, which is manifestly false, that the vene- rators of that once tuneful tongue now sealed in eternal mute- ness, were inspired only by a remembrance of favours where further advancement is hopeless, the fact would imply the existence of a virtue the more valuable because of its rarity. Of all the stains and shames of Jacobinism, its exclusion of gratitude from the pale of morality is the very vilest. If there be a rule universal and infallible, it is this — that no stable good quality will ever be found in a heart which, when its turn is answered, becomes insensible to obligation. e So much digressively. e It was upon one of the celebrations of Mr. Fox's birthday, at which the Duke of Norfolk presided, that the Duke gave the toast which caused the privation of his Lieutenancy and Regiment. Immediately on taking away the table cloth, his Grace stood up and uttered these words :• — Gentlemen, let us begin by drinking our sovereign— — throughout the company there was a general note of preparation for the King's health, when the Duke unexpectedly added — ' the people' The Duke commented briefly upon the principle of his toast, referring very shortly to General Washington, and to the outset of the American war. This incident took place on the 24th of Janu- ary* 179&- 1° about a week after it, the removal of the Duke became known to the public. At such a festival it is obvi- ous that Mr. Fox could not have been present. But upon the next meeting of the Whig Club (the 6th of the subsequent month of February) of which meeting, also, the Duke of Norfolk was Chairman, Mr. Fox (apprized of what was soon well known, that the slap given to the Duke had gone to the quick) Mr. Fox, with his characteristic generosity, in a speech at this meeting aimost petitioned that his name might be struck out of the Privy Council j in order to his sharing the Duke's court disgrace. Nothing was farther from offensive than the intention of the Noble Duke in his toast. There was, never- theless, an infelicity in the maimer of it ; and in that manner consisted its virus. Neither in matter, however, nor in mode is that occurrence to be any more compared with the example set by Lord Fitzwilliam respecting the late Yorkshire Meet- ing, than the Convention of Parliament in 1688 resembled the Delegates, ' as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth,' who about three years since assembled in London to brush away King, Lords, and Commons, as so many cobwebs ; and to tread upon the neck of this nation as they would crush a spider. ' Misery acquaints us with strange companions,' Exuberant c XXVI as the age has been in wonders, is any one of them more mar- vellous than to see the same Lord Fitzwilliam, who (at a period of time when Spencean Philanthropy had never been heard of — when universal suffrage was the mere reverie of an isolated theorist) could, from terror of imaginary innovation, break the bands that bound him in virtuous confederacy with some of the best and brightest of mortals — in reality no more innovators than himself — that the same Lord Fitzwilliam, one of the most moral of men and purest of possible christians, should allow party feeling to place him upon a county hustings, sidling some of the apostles of a faith that reviles as 'fraud and mockery* the Christianity which, with ' the solemn temples' brought at once ' the gorgeous palaces,' the yeoman's farms and the peasant's cottages into this island, (at that time the den of the most beastly degradation) the Christianity which changed its entire face, raising and sublimating the whole island into the glorious thing it now is, from a vileness that could fawn and fall down before such a monster as Claudius ; hugging their ehains as a blessing, and deprecating freedom as a curse — the Christianity which congregated the whole population in the mild communion of him who came in ' Majesty of Meekness,' in place of the horrible idolatry which propitiated its demon divinities with human blood — this uncouth incorporation of Lord Fitzwilliam with the genius of radicalism being for the pretext of assembling Parliament— after Parliament had been regular ly- convoked to assemble ? * That Bonaparte, after sitting upon Louis the XlVth's throne, should be caged in a British islet is, indeed, amazing ; but is it more so, than to see the Earl Fitzwilliam and Mr. Wooller upon the same political platform — rebus sic stanti- bus? ' What ! Is Lord Fitzwilliam charged with wishing well to the creed of Mr. Wooller ? This sapient question is best answered by another short interrogatory. Did the Duke of Orleans wish for the guillotine ? November 18, 1819. ' D.' If Mr. Bennett should hereafter act in public life with any other than his present Party, and treats his former political associates as I have con- ducted myself towards the friends of Mr. Fox, his fate will be hard indeed, if he receive not better measure than he has dealt to me. D. O'BRYEN. 21. Craven St, Nov. 22d, 1820. XXV11 APPENDIX— No. 7. The following letter, written by me in a day or two after the refusal stated in page 36, was enclosed to, and reinclosed from, the Duke of Bedford in Paris. His Grace's two letters at Paris I have not yet found among my papers. From memory, however, I am certain that the Duke said, in substance, that he had burnt my two first letters alluded to in my third letter (the following) and that, concluding I wished to have the follow- ing back, as well as the two that preceded it, the Duke, together with his reply, put the following under an invelope — the identical letter so received by, and returned from, his Grace being the com- positor's copy for this work. Mr. D. O'Bryen to the Duke of Bedford, Both in Paris. * Hotel de Londres, Rue de UEchiquier^ < October the 25th, 1815. f My Lord, ' With all deference to your Grace's exalted rank, and with every respect for your amiable moral character, I take the liberty of requesting the return to me of the two letters with which I, most reluctantly, troubled your Grace on Friday and Sunday last. Written in haste, agitation, and confidence, I made no copies of them ; and the mortification, growing with the growth of every fresh reflection, which fills my lacerated heart, makes me anxious to be in possession of a correct transcript of the two communications. The originals your Grace will find safe under seal in Hamilton Place at your return to England. Though sore and surprised at the nature of your Grace's answer when I received it, my pain and astonish- ment are only the more encreased, the more I think of the subject. I begged in my second letter (which second letter put the required loan wholly out of question) that your Grace would * for the love of God,' allow me an opportunity of explanation upon the topic, so replete with every delicacy, there- in referred to, in case any doubt existed in your mind. Your Grace neither grants the opportunity, nor disclaims the necessity XXV111 of it j and I am left by your silence under the most distressing implications, upon a point as clear and pure on my side, as on that of ' any inhabitant of Heaven.'* As nothing shall ever induce me to owe to your Grace the slightest favour ; and as it is not likely that I should ever trouble you with a letter after this I am now writing, I really, with all submission, shall claim the right of showing that your conduct to me is neither deserved by me, nor worthy of yourself. My Lord, in whatever region political liberty has existed, there have co-existed parties. Parties are generated by freedom, and where parties are put down, freedom will not long survive them. Mental powers and worldly possessions are so unequally distributed, that civil associations would be impossible, without interchanges of the gifts of God and the gifts of fortune. Poverty of purse is balanced by activity of mind j and greatness is softened by a sense of its political nothingness without ad- herents. The rich help the poor j and protection is repaid by zeal and by talents. Thus it was in Greece. Thus it was in Rome. Thus it was, and is, and ever will be, in England until the essence of its constitution is wholly engulphed in the whirlpool of the multitude, or in the vortex of the court. Your Grace's ancestors were a portion, a glorious portion indeed, of a party j and it is only by ignorance, or by tyranny, with its true born imp corruption, that party is decried and run at. My Lord, I venture to affirm, that in the wide circle of partizanship the humble writer of this letter has never been surpassed. There is no honest service that I have not perform- ed. There is no suffering that I have not endured. My liberty has been struck at often — my life once. Over and over oppor- tunities have been by me declined of ample provision, if I had cultivated interest at the expence of fidelity. In bodily efforts not yielding to those who had nothing else to contribute. In intellectual labour outstripping even the exclusively contem- plative. In those manceuvrings which are compounded of the labours of both the body and the mind, not inferior to either confederate or opponent. Upon every part of my history, however, I shall drop a curtain, excepting only such passages of it as bear some relation to your Grace. I say then first, generally, that no individual has more assiduously strove, upon every occasion that occurred, to render all honour to the noble name of Russell than I have ■ and I say, particularly, that to none of the high personages of the Whig * This passage refers to the subject of Mr. Fox's letters, mentioned in pages 29, 30, 31, and 32, which letters were delivered by me to the Lord Chief Commissioner. XXIX party, have my homages and devotions been more marked or more efficacious than to your Grace. Although the West- minster contest of Trentham and Vandeput took place before I was born, yet it happens to be in my certain knowledge, that the single contribution towards that election of your Grace's grandfather was no less a sum than 50001. Your Grace, I am persuaded, would do no less for Mr. Fox — -but I so managed the only contest for Mr. Fox, since your accession to the duke- dom, that his election did not cost your Grace quite 2001. I know that you praised my management of that election— Laudatur et alget — but so my Lord, did the Duke of Northum- berland (to me a personal stranger) under his own hand. In fact, to withhold commendation was impossible. Of the two other contributors to that contest (2001. each) one still survives — and long may he so, as a blessing to mankind. Westminster con- tests had cost these noble persons (the late Duke of Devonshire and Lord Fitzwilliam) such masses of thousands, that both spoke of that victory (that of 1802) so cheaply achieved, as a prodigy. It was the only election in which the ministry of the money was in me alone) and it was the only one, of which the subscribers ever hadone shilling of their subscriptions returned to them — though the whole fund was only 8001. My Lord, I know not whether your Grace will be pleased to admit that election to have been a service — but I am sure that to none of the noble contributor! was it productive of more convenience than to your Grace. It enabled you to oblige an additional friend with an additional seat in parliament, which was destined by your Grace for Mr. Fox. Your Grace, upon a visit to Lord Torrington in Windsor Forest, rode over to St. Anne's Hill, in June 1802} where you found me in the very act of arguing upon his proclaimed retirement from public life with Mr. Fox — in the book room. You said that you wished to arrange about the general election, then expected daily. Mr. Fox begged of your Grace not to think of him. On the previous Sunday, Lords Thanet, Lauderdale, Robert Spencer, and General Fitzpatrick, after dining at St. Anne's, reported at Brookes's, on Mr. Fox's own authority, that he had finally given up public life. On the next day I found Sheridan (with Mr. Fox's concurrence certainly) canvassing in Pall Mall I advised him to stop ; and straightways I set off for St. Anne's. It was on the day after, that your Grace came there from Lord Torrington's. The conversation finished with Mr. Fox's replying to your Grace in these words. ' If I come into parliament at all, it should be for Westminster.' My Lord, I never quitted St. Anne's Hill till I won him from his purpose. I carried my point not by influence — I never possessed the least bit in any quarter. I subdued him by that which wa3 never thrown away upon him — fair reasoning. My XXX Lord, I am ignorant whether thai will be accounted a service — but all the world kno\v9 that out of it grew those events which made him a Minister and your Grace Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Your Grace had, at that general election, the honour conjointly with Mr. Fox, of carrying the Middlesex return, by my instrumentality j and I took special care, although, considerable expenses were incurred in Lord William's name, that your Grace should not be at the los9 of one farthing. Having got to the last page of my sheet of paper, I shall dwell no longer upon indirect services - } but refer to a service which is directly personal to your Grace. The most virulent, indeed the only, calumniator of your late illustrious and admirable brother, was by me so completely ' turned inside out' (I quote those who were in no wise partial to myself,) that he has never dared to venture another line, although in his last letter to the Lord Chief Commissioner Adam, he expressly lays in his claim to be * at his dirty work again.' However beaten blind in the course of the correspon- dence with Mr. Adam, still he clings to his right of rejoinder. It was this malicious pertinacity which provoked me to fall upon him ; and the thing was done so effectually that he has never since dared to say a single word in his own defence. No article ever had more diffusion than the article in question— for it was republished in divers other channels, besides the Morn- ing Chronicle. I never even to this hour, have seen the face of this person. I had no earthly incitement but what respected your Grace. My Lord, I am drawing- to the end of my space and must cease further enumerations. If in the delicate and wonder-working powers of the Lord Chief Commissioner, my affairs have been aided from your Grace's stores, such, assuredly, was no act of mine. It would be hard, indeed, that considerations, unknown to me, in their origin, and wholly independent of me, should be made an onus upon my feelings. I never asked any thing of your Grace in all my life for myself, excepting one hundred pounds last Friday to take me out of this strange country and to purchase what may meliorate my prospects for ever— and, in this strange land and for such a purpose, it has pleased your Grace's goodness to refuse me. But, my Lord, you will not refuse to let me have my two former letters, which shall be restored most faithfully. As they will cause no other trouble to your Grace than merely sealing them up, may I supplicate your Grace to send them here as soon as possible, at all events in the course of this day or night. Every hour increases my straits in this expensive capital, and I wish to depart from it in the morning. I have the honour to be, my Lord, 1 Your Grace's obedient and very humble servant, ■ D. O'BRYENV XXXI The copying of documents must stop some- where. Divers letters of the Duke of Bedford to me are, at this moment, upon my writing table. The following closing paragraph, extracted from one of them, (not marked private, nor at all of a private nature,) will enable the reader to judge whether there was any thing very extraordinary in the Paris application to his Grace from me, whose intercourse with the Duke, (unrippled by the slightest misunderstanding) had been of little less standing than 30 years at the date of that appli- cation, viz. October, 1815. His Grace's letter is dated c Phcenix Park, December the 21st, 1806,' and the extract from it is in these words : 6 When I recollect that your brother's interests were c recommended to me by you, I assure you I feel much c satisfaction at being afforded so early an opportunity of c proving the deep sense I entertain of the steady/firm, ( and unshaken attachment you have shown to those 6 principles upon which I have acted through life ; and 6 which bound us by common ties of affection to that ' great, and virtuous, and excellent man, whom it has 6 been our irreparable misfortune to lose. 6 Ever, my dear Sir, c With true regard, c Most faithfully your's, (Signed.) < Bedford: N. B. Trusting that I have demonstrated the 6 universal error' of Mr. Bennett, (of Mr. Ben- nett, a Whig, and a Foxite,) this narrative is now terminated. Finis, ^