I have labored hard
to earn what the noble Lords are generous enough to pay. Personal
offence I have given them none. The part they take against me is from
zeal to the cause. It is well,--it is perfectly well. I have to do
homage to their justice. I have to thank the Bedfords and the
Lauderdales for having so faithfully and so fully acquitted towards me
whatever arrear of debt was left undischarged by the Priestleys and the
Paines.
Some, perhaps, may think them executors in their own wrong: I at least
have nothing to complain of. They have gone beyond the demands of
justice. They have been (a little, perhaps, beyond their intention)
favorable to me. They have been the means of bringing out by their
invectives the handsome things which Lord Grenville has had the goodness
and condescension to say in my behalf. Retired as I am from the world,
and from all its affairs and all its pleasures, I confess it does kindle
in my nearly extinguished feelings a very vivid satisfaction to be so
attacked and so commended. It is soothing to my wounded mind to be
commended by an able, vigorous, and well-informed statesman, and at the
very moment when he stands forth, with a manliness and resolution worthy
of himself and of his cause, for the preservation of the person and
government of our sovereign, and therein for the security of the laws,
the liberties, the morals, and the lives of his people. To be in any
fair way connected with such things is indeed a distinction.
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