of the monument at Wentworth; it is really a fine thing, and the situation wonderfully well chosen. You know what my opinion is about the importance of Ireland, to the safety of the succession, and the tranquillity of this kingdom. With that opinion, as well as from my cordial good wishes to your lordship, and your friends, I rejoice to find, that on the whole, the elections have been favourable. This is more than I dare to promise myself for this side of the water. You will permit me to convey, through your lordship, my most thankful acknowledgments to the Royal Academy of Ireland, for the great honour they have done me. Believe me ever, my dear lord, your faithful and most obliged, humble servant,

EDM. BURKE.

EDMUND BURKE TO THE EARL OF
CHARLEMONT.

MY DEAR LORD,

Beaconsfield, December 29th, 1791.

I HAVE seldom been more vexed than when I found that a visit of mere formality had deprived me of the substantial satisfaction which Mrs. Burke and my brother had, in seeing you as well as they had ever remembered you.-Many things, at that time, had contributed to make that loss very great to me. Your lordship is very good, in lamenting the difference which politics had made between Mr. Fox and me. Your condolence was truly kind; for my loss has been truly

great, in the cessation of the partiality of a man of his wonderful abilities and amiable disposition. Your lordship is a little angry at politics that can dissolve friendships. If it should please God to lend me a little longer life, they will not, I hope, cause me to lose the few friends I have left; for I have left all politics, I think, for ever. Every thing that remains of my relation to the public will be only in my wishes, which are warm and sincere, that this constitution should be thoroughly understood; for then I am sure it will be sincerely loved; that its benefits may be widely extended, and lastingly continued; and that no man may have an excuse to wish it to have another fortune, than I pray it may long flourish in. I am sure that your country, in whose prosperity I include the most valuable interest of this, will have reason to look back on what you have done for it with gratitude, and will have reason to think the continuance of your health, for her further service, amongst the greatest advantages she is likely to expect.-Here is my son, who will deliver this to you. He will be indemnified for what I have lost: I think I may speak for this my other and better self, that he loves you almost as much as I do. Pray tell Lady Charlemont, and the ladies, how much Mrs. Burke, my brother, and myself, are their humble servants. Believe me, my dear lord, with the most sincere respect and affection, your lordship's most faithful, obliged, and obedient humble servant,

EDM. BURKE,

EDMUND BURKE TO CAPTAIN MERCER.

DEAR SIR, London, February 26th, 1790. THE speedy answer I return to your letter, I hope will convince you of the high value I set upon the regard you are so good to express for me, and the obliging trouble which you take to inform my judgment upon matters upon which we are all very deeply concerned. I think perfectly well of your heart and your principles, and of the strength of your natural understanding, which, according to your opportunities, you , have not been wanting in pains to improve. If you are mistaken, it is perhaps owing to the impression almost inevitably made by the various careless conversations which we are engaged in through life; conversations in which those who propagate their doctrines have not been called upon for much reflection concerning their end and tendency; and in which those who imperceptibly imbibe the doctrines taught, are not required, by a particular duty, very closely to examine them, or to act from the impressions they receive. I am obliged to act, and am therefore bound to call my principles and sentiments to a strict account. As far as my share of a public trust goes, I am in trust religiously to maintain the rights and properties of all descriptions of people in the possession which they legally hold; and in the rule by which alone they can be secure in any possession. I do not find myself at liberty, either as a man, or as a trustee for men, to take a vested property from one man and to give it to another,

because I think that the portion of one is too great, and that of another too small. From my first juvenile rudiments of speculative study to the gray hairs of my present experience, I have never learned any thing else. I cannot be taught any thing else by reason; and when force comes, I shall consider whether I am to submit to it, or how I am to resist it. This I am sure of, that an early guard against the manifest tendency of a contrary doctrine is the only way by which those who love order can be prepared to resist such force.

The calling men by the names of "pampered and luxurious prelates," &c. is in you no more than a mark of your dislike to intemperate and idle expense; but in others it is used for other purposes. It is often used to extinguish the sense of justice in our minds, and the natural feelings of humanity in our bosoms. Such language does not mitigate the cruel effects of reducing men of opulent condition, and their innumerable dependants to the last distress. If I were to adopt the plan of a spoliatory reforma, tion, I should probably employ such language; but it would aggravate instead of extenuating my guilt in overturning the sacred principles of property.

Sir, I say that church and state, and human society too, for which church and state are made, are subverted by such doctrines, joined to such practices, as leave no foundation for property in long possession. My dear Captain Mercer, it is not my calling the use you make of your plate in your house, either of dwelling or of prayer,

pageantry and hypocrisy,” that can justify me in taking from you your own property, and your own liberty to use your own property according to your own ideas of ornament. When you find me attempting to break into your house to take your plate, under any pretence whatsoever, but most of all under pretence of purity of religion and Christian charity, shoot me for a robber and a hypocrite, as in that case I shall certainly be. The "true Christian religion" never taught me any such practices, nor did the religion of my nature, nor any religion, nor any law.

Let those who never abstained from a full meal, and as much wine as they could swallow, for a single day of their whole lives, satirize "luxurious and pampered prelates" if they will. Let them abuse such prelates, and such lords, and such squires, provided it be only to correct their vices. I care not much about the language of this moral satire, if they go no further than satire. But there are occasions, when the language of Falstaff, reproaching the Londoners, whom he robbed in their way to Canterbury, with gorbellies and their city luxury, is not so becoming.

It is not calling the landed estates, possessed by old prescriptive rights, the "accumulations of ignorance and superstition," that can support me in shaking that grand title, which supersedes all other title, and which all my studies of general jurisprudence have taught me to consider as one principal cause of the formation of states; I mean the ascertaining and securing prescription. But