I answer, that my exertions,
whatever they have been, were such as no hopes of pecuniary reward could
possibly excite; and no pecuniary compensation can possibly reward them.
Between money and such services, if done by abler men than I am, there
is no common principle of comparison: they are quantities
incommensurable. Money is made for the comfort and convenience of animal
life. It cannot be a reward for what mere animal life must, indeed,
sustain, but never can inspire. With submission to his Grace, I have not
had more than sufficient. As to any noble use, I trust I know how to
employ as well as he a much greater fortune than he possesses. In a more
confined application, I certainly stand in need of every kind of relief
and easement much more than he does. When I say I have not received more
than I deserve, is this the language I hold to Majesty? No! Far, very
far, from it! Before that presence I claim no merit at all. Everything
towards me is favor and bounty. One style to a gracious benefactor;
another to a proud and insulting foe.
His Grace is pleased to aggravate my guilt by charging my acceptance of
his Majesty's grant as a departure from my ideas and the spirit of my
conduct with regard to economy. If it be, my ideas of economy wore false
and ill-founded. But they are the Duke of Bedford's ideas of economy I
have contradicted, and not my own. If he means to allude to certain
bills brought in by me on a message from the throne in 1782, I tell him
that there is nothing in my conduct that can contradict either the
letter or the spirit of those acts.
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