violent a St. Anthony's fire, but is well again. I will reserve the rest of my paper for new promotions.

I never deal in scandal, madam, but one may make use of it as an antidote to itself. You must have seen in the papers much gross abuse on a pretty ingenious friend of mine for a low amour with one of her own servants, for which I seriously believe there was not the smallest foundation. The charge is now removed to much higher quarters, which at least are more creditable. The town has for these ten days affirmed that the Lord husband was going to cite into the Spiritual Court the head of the Temporal one-nay, and the third chief of the Common Law-nay, and the second of the Spiritual one too. Such conquests would be very honourable in the records. of love, and the first very diverting, as the hero has so much distinguished himself by severity on bills of divorce. I do not warrant any of these stories, but totally discredit that of the domestic. A prude may begin with a footman, and a gallant woman may end with one, but a pretty woman, who has so many slaves in high life, does not think of a livery, especially where vanity is the principal ingredient in her composition.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Berkeley Square, March 13th, 1783.

I Do not know whether this letter will not be still shorter than my last; but your nephew sets out next week, and will give you full de tails of the interlude, for it is now finished. Lord North received command yesterday to form a new Administration according to his own proposal, of which he is not to be the chief, but the Duke of Portland. I have not yet heard the other arrangements, for the interministerium, which had lasted seventeen days, ceased but yester day morning, and was not divulged till the evening.

We shall now, I hope, have a settlement for some time-I mean it is necessary to the country. To me revolutions are but a scene that passes like so many others to which I have been witness, and in which I am concerned but as one of the people. I do not forget how soon I am to leave the theatre even as a spectator. I rejoice in the peace as a happy denouement of one tragedy. What is to follow I trust will only be a comedy (like those of other pacific periods,) as politics are in my eyes when not bloodied by war.

Friday, 14th.

I believe I shall not be able to send you the new litany to night: it had not received the imprimatur yesterday, as there must be two responses to adjust, for those who are to be dismissed, From our enemies defend us, O Lord! and for the candidates who are to succeed

them, We beseech the to hear us. The town, who never takes so much time to deliberate, disposed the whole arrangement in a moment, though every editor gave different readings. I shall give you neither the one nor the other, as most may be apocryphal, but wait for the genuine edition in usum Delphini.

We have received the dreadful accounts of the devastation of Messina, &c. I say no more, for I could only detail the commonplace reflexions that present themselves on such calamities!

MEMOIR

RELATIVE TO HIS INCOME,

BY HORACE WALPOLE

In my youth, my father, Sir Robert Walpole, then Prime Minister, gave me the two patent little places I still hold, of Clerk of the Estreats and Controller of the Pipe, which, together, produce about or near 300l. per annum. When I was about eighteen or nineteen, he gave me the place of Inspector of the Imports and Exports in the Custom-house, which I resigned in about a year, on his giving me the patent-place of Usher of the Exchequer, then reckoned worth 9001. a-year. From that time I lived on my own income, and travelled at my own expense, nor did I during my father's life receive from him but 250l. at different times; which I say, not in derogation of his extreme tenderness and goodness to me, but to show that I was content with what he had given to me, and that from the age of twenty I was no charge to my family.

Before my father's quitting his post, he, at the instance of my eldest brother, Lord Walpole, had altered the delivery of Exchequer bills from ten pounds to a hundred pounds. My deputy, after that alteration was made, observed, that as Usher of the Exchequer, who furnishes the materials of Exchequer bills, on which, by the table of rates in the Exchequer, I had a stated profit, I should lose ten per cent., which he represented to my father, who, having altered them to oblige my brother, would not undo what he had done: but, to repair the prejudice I had suffered, Sir Robert, with his wonted equity and tenderness, determined to give me 2000. in lieu of what I lost. and would have added that legacy in a codicil to his will; but this happening only two days before his death, when he was little capable of making that codicil, my brother, Lord Walpole, engaged, at my father's desire, to pay me 400l. a-year, which not long after, my brother redeemed for the intended 20007.

King George the First had graciously bestowed on my father the patent-place of Collector of the Customs, for his own life, and for the lives of his two elder sons Robert and Edward; but my father reserved in himself a right of disposing of the income of that place as he should please, during the existence of the grant. Accordingly,.

having afterwards obtained for his eldest son Robert the great place of Auditor of the Exchequer, and for his second son Edward that of Clerk of the Pells, he bequeathed, by an instrument under his hand, 1000l. a-year to me, out of the patent, for the remainder of the term, and devised the remainder, about 8007. a-year, to be divided between my brother Edward and me.

Having provided thus largely for my brother Edward. and me, and leaving nothing but an estate in land, of nominally 8000l. a-year, and a debt of between forty and fifty thousand pounds, he gave to my brother Edward and me only 5000l. a-piece; of which I have never received but 1000l., and none of the interest. He also gave to my brother Edward a freehold house in Pall Mall, and to me the remainder of a house in Arlington-street; which went away from me in 1781, the term being expired.

Though my portion was much inferior to my brother's, still it was a noble fortune for a third son, and much beyond what I expected or deserved. Yet, undoubtedly, so excellent a parent would not have made so slender a provision as 50007. for a son he loved, if he had not had the opportunity and the legal right of giving me a much ampler fortune of what he had obtained by his long and faithful and very essential services to the Kings George the First and Second.

I presume boldly to say that my father had a legal right of making the provision for me he did in the places I hold. Patent-places for life have existed from time immemorial, by law, and under all changes of Government. He who holds an ancient patent-place enjoys it as much by law as any gentleman holds his estate, and by more ancient tenure than most gentlemen hold theirs, and from the same fountain, only of ancienter date, than many of the nobility and gentry hold their estates, who possess them only by grants from the Crown, as I possess my places; which were not wrung from the Church, and in violation of the intention of the donors, as a vast number of estates were: nor can I think myself as a patent-placeman a more useless or a less legal engrosser of part of the wealth of the nation than deans and prebendaries, who fatten on Christianity like any less holy incumbent of a fee. While there are distinctions of ranks, and unequal divisions of property, not acquired by personal merit, but by birth or favours, some will be more fortunate than others. The poor are most entitled to complain; but an archdeacon, or a country gentleman, has very little grace in complaining that any other unprofitable class is indulged by the laws in the enjoyment of more than an equal share of property with the meanest labourer or lowest mechanic.

Having said this with the confidence that does not misbecome a legal possessor, I am far from pretending to any other plea, much less to any merit in myself. A tender parent lavished riches on me greatly beyond my desert, of which I am so little conscious in myself, that, if the distresses of the public require a revocation of gifts bestowed by the Crown in its splendour, I know no man who can

can.

plead fewer services to his country, or less merit in himself than I In one light only I can wipe off an aspersion, in which patentplacemen have been confounded with other placemen. No man who holds a place for life is dependent on the Crown, farther than his duty or his gratitude binds him. I, perhaps, by the nature of my -office, which I shall explain hereafter, am more dependent than almost any patent-holder; and yet I may presume to say that, having suffered by that dependence, because I would not violate my principles and conscience, I cannot be deemed a servile placeman.

Endowed so bountifully by a fond parent, as I have allowed myself to be, it would be ridiculous to say that I have been content. Yet, not having unfolded some peculiarities in my situation, I may venture to say that I have shown that I could be content with a considerable diminution. I have never made any merit of that moderation; but when I am held out to the public as one whom the public are called upon to reduce to an humbler lot, which I am ready to admit, if it be but allowed that all my guilt consists in holding what somebody else would have held if I did not, it may be permitted to me to prove, that while I assume no claim of merit, I have declined every offered opportunity of enlarging or securing my fortune, because I would not be bound to serve any Minister contrary to my principles, and be cause I choose to have no obligations but to one to whom I owed every thing, and to whom it was my duty, and whom it would be my pride, to obey, if he were on earth to exact that obedience.

I have said that my father left me much the larger share in the income of the patent-place in the Custom-house. I have also men tioned that the patent was granted to my father during the lives of him and his two elder sons,-on his death there remained the lives, of my two brothers-and that my share would consequently cease entirely if I survived them. The health of my eldest brother declining, and my brother Edward being eleven years older than me, two or three of my best friends urged me to ask to have my life added to the patent. I refused, but I own I was at last over-persuaded to make application to Mr. Phelham-how unwillingly will appear by my behaviour on that occasion, which did not last two minutes. I went to him and made my request. He replied civilly, he could not ask the King to add my life to the patent; but, if I could get my brother Edward to let my life stand in lieu of his, he would endeavour to serve me. I answered quickly, "Sir, I will never ask my brother to stand in a precarious light instead of me;" and, hurrying out of his house, returned to two of my friends who waited for me, and said to them, "I have done what you desired me to do, but, thank God, I have been refused." This was in the year 1751, and was the first and last favour I ever asked of any Minister for myself.

*My conduct, while I sat in Parliament, is most probably forgotten; but no man can recollect that it looked like servility to Ministers. viate what never was objected to me. It is needless to ob