(and to a gentleman that is not much) than death, I do not think any of the French soi-disant judicial proceedings surpass in injustice and contempt of law those in Scotland; and yet I hear from good authority what, till I heard it from authority, I resolutely disbelieved, that not only these proceedings are to be defended in Parliament, but that the sentences are to be executed, and that sedition, the most vague and loose in its description of all misdemeanours, is to be considered as punishable, and actually to be punished in Scotland, as a felony. It is evident that those who execute the supposed law in Scotland must wish it were law here too, and such are the times that what they wish they may easily obtain if they have the courage to ask it.* You will easily believe I shall not acquiesce in this tyranny without an effort, but I am far from sanguine as to success. We live in times of violence and of extremes, and all those who are for creating or even for retaining checks upon power are considered as enemies to order. However, one must do one's duty, and one must endeavour to do it without passion, but everything in Europe appears to my ideas so monstrous that it is difficult to think of things calmly even alone, much more to discuss them so, when heated by dispute. Good God! that a man

* Mr. Thomas Muir, an advocate, was tried at Edinburgh, in August, 1793, for sedition, and Mr. Thomas Fyshe Palmer, was tried at Perth, in September, for the same offence. Both were sentenced to transportation for fourteen years. See Howell's "State Trials," vol. xxiii., and Adolphus's "History of George III.," vol. v., pp. 538-41. Mr. Adam called the attention of the House of Commons to the legality and propriety of these sentences, on the 10th of March, 1794, on which occasion the conduct of the Scotch judges was severely censured by Mr. Fox.

should be sent to Botany Bay for advising another to read Paine's book, or for reading the Irish address at a public meeting! for these are the charges against Muir, and the first of them is I think not satisfactorily proved.

"On tremble en comparant l'offense et le supplice."

"You will perceive by this long letter that I am not very sanguine about the events of this winter; I am not indeed; I feel it at the same time to be a most critical period, for if all these horrors abroad and at home can be endured with the bad success of the war, what will, or rather what will not be the power of the crown if chance should ever make us prosperous? It is true indeed that in the way in which we proceed this is not very likely to happen.

"God bless you, my dear Henry."

MR. GRENVILLE TO C. J. FOX.*

"DEAR CHARLES,

"TAPLOW, December 29th, 1793.

"I sit down to write to you with an impression of greater uneasiness and anxiety, than has ever yet belonged to any letter from me to you: that impression is too the more hopeless because it arises not out of any new event, or alteration of any opinions which I have been used to entertain, but out of a conviction daily increasing in my mind, that the opinions which I hold are such as I cannot change, and

This Letter is inserted here, as it tends to the explanation of those which follow.

yet are such as are likely to be most at variance with yours, in very many of the most probable subjects of public business, perhaps in the greater part of those which are at present easy to be foreseen. The main points of difference between us are two; the one is respecting the war with France, which you condemn and oppose, while I think it the greatest of all duties to support and maintain it to the utmost: the other respects an apprehension which I entertain of those principles, and designs in this country adverse to the constitution of it, which makes me feel it to be my duty to resist whatever can give to such designs either strength, opportunity, or countenance; while you on the other hand, believe in no such designs, and believe the danger to arise from there being too little spirit of free inquiry and resistance, in the minds of the people of this country. Either of these subjects of difference existing between us would tell much in public conduct, but both united extend very widely indeed, and must in their direct course, or at least in their bearings and consequences, pervade almost all measures of public discussion. I do not write to go into the arguments of these questions; there is nothing new to be stated about them; nor to any detail of new measures which would seem to call for any explanation; I have none in view, other than a more direct and manifest assertion of those opinions which the pressure of the time seems to make necessary, and which it would be neither manly nor honorable, nor useful in me to disguise or suppress; if I write to you then at this moment, it is rather to anticipate the pain

which I am to feel out of this miserable shape of things, and, bad philosophy as it may be to force both into your view and mine all this scene of uneasiness three weeks earlier than it need come, I have not been able to resist doing so. Perhaps that it is so unpleasant to me to write this letter, has been the temptation to me to do so: if I have any other motive it is only the honest one of making myself sure that you should know my thoughts and feelings to the same extent to which I know them myself. I know no other happiness in life, than that of being persuaded that I do right whatever may be the consequences, and sure I am that in this instance, I need not tell you what it was to me to do so.

"Ever, my dear Charles,

"Very truly and affectionately yours,

"I am quite ashamed when I think of my not having written you one line since the meeting of Parliament, but for some time you know your direction was uncertain: you will perceive from the newspapers to what numbers we are reduced, though small as they are, they are better than I expected. I mean the 59 upon the first day; * for the smallness of our divisions since

* Parliament met on the 21st of January, 1794. An amendment to the address, advising the Crown to treat with France for peace, was moved; but the original address was carried by 277 to 59 votes.

is owing to want of exertion for attendance, not to any defection. The Duke of P. (Portland), Fitzwilliam,* and Grenville † all came, or wrote to me some days before the meeting of Parliament, to tell me, with the strongest expressions at the same time of personal friendship and esteem, that they felt it necessary to take a more decided line than they had hitherto done, in support of the administration, in short to declare formally the separation, or rather the dissolution, of the Whig party. Many from this supposed that they meant to join Ministry by taking offices. I did not, and I now think it is clear that I was right. However they all voted for the address, and persuaded the Duke of Devonshire to do the same, and the Cavendishes in the House of Commons to stay away, for they could not be brought to vote with Pitt, or for the war. You will easily imagine how much I felt the separation from persons with whom I had so long been in the habit of agreeing; it seemed some way as if I had the world to begin anew, and if I could have done it with honour, what I should best have liked would have been to retire from politics altogether, but this could not be done, and therefore there remains nothing but to get together the remains of our party, and begin, like Sisyphus, to roll up the stone again,

* Earl Fitzwilliam, born 1748; died 1833.

Mr. Thomas Grenville, second son of Mr. George Grenville, and brother to Lord Temple, afterwards Marquis of Buckingham, the writer of the preceding letter. His mission to Paris, in 1782, is described in the first volume of these Memoirs. For an account of Mr. Fox's friends who at this time joined the Government, see "Lord Holland's Memoirs of the Whig Party," vol. i. p. 73.

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