A great many of them had as pompous titles as he, and
were of full as illustrious a race; some few of them had fortunes as
ample; several of them, without meaning the least disparagement to the
Duke of Bedford, were as wise, and as virtuous, and as valiant, and as
well educated, and as complete in all the lineaments of men of honor, as
he is; and to all this they had added the powerful outguard of a
military profession, which, in its nature, renders men somewhat more
cautious than those who have nothing to attend to but the lazy enjoyment
of undisturbed possessions. But security was their ruin. They are
dashed to pieces in the storm, and our shores are covered with the
wrecks. If they had been aware that such a thing might happen, such a
thing never could have happened.
I assure his Grace, that, if I state to him the designs of his enemies
in a manner which may appear to him ludicrous and impossible, I tell him
nothing that has not exactly happened, point by point, but twenty-four
miles from our own shore. I assure him that the Frenchified faction,
more encouraged than others are warned by what has happened in France,
look at him and his landed possessions as an object at once of curiosity
and rapacity. He is made for them in every part of their double
character. As robbers, to them he is a noble booty; as speculatists, he
is a glorious subject for their experimental philosophy. He affords
matter for an extensive analysis in all the branches of their science,
geometrical, physical, civil, and political.
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