Others may value them most for the _intention_. In that,
surely, they are not mistaken.
Does his Grace think that they who advised the crown to make my retreat
easy considered me only as an economist? That, well understood, however,
is a good deal. If I had not deemed it of some value, I should not have
made political economy an object of my humble studies from my very early
youth to near the end of my service in Parliament, even before (at least
to any knowledge of mine) it had employed the thoughts of speculative
men in other parts of Europe. At that time it was still in its infancy
in England, where, in the last century, it had its origin. Great and
learned men thought my studies were not wholly thrown away, and deigned
to communicate with me now and then on some particulars of their
immortal works. Something of these studies may appear incidentally in
some of the earliest things I published. The House has been witness to
their effect, and has profited of them, more or less, for above
eight-and-twenty years.
To their estimate I leave the matter. I was not, like his Grace of
Bedford, swaddled and rocked and dandled into a legislator: "_Nitor in
adversum_" is the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one of the
qualities nor cultivated one of the arts that recommend men to the favor
and protection of the great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As
little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts by imposing on the
understandings of the people.
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