Tyranny and cruelty may make men justly wish the downfall of abused
powers, but I believe that no government ever yet perished from any
other direct cause than its own weakness. My opinion is against an
overdoing of any sort of administration, and more especially against
this most momentous of all meddling on the part of authority,--the
meddling with the subsistence of the people.
A
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
ON
THE ATTACKS MADE UPON MR. BURKE AND HIS PENSION, IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS,
BY
THE DUKE OF BEDFORD AND THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE,
EARLY IN THE PRESENT SESSION OF PARLIAMENT.
1796.
LETTER.
My lord,--I could hardly flatter myself with the hope that so very early
in the season I should have to acknowledge obligations to the Duke of
Bedford and to the Earl of Lauderdale. These noble persons have lost no
time in conferring upon me that sort of honor which it is alone within
their competence, and which it is certainly most congenial to their
nature and their manners, to bestow.
To be ill spoken of, in whatever language they speak, by the zealots of
the new sect in philosophy and politics, of which these noble persons
think so charitably, and of which others think so justly, to me is no
matter of uneasiness or surprise. To have incurred the displeasure of
the Duke of Orleans or the Duke of Bedford, to fall under the censure of
Citizen Brissot or of his friend the Earl of Lauderdale, I ought to
consider as proofs, not the least satisfactory, that I have produced
some part of the effect I proposed by my endeavors.
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