conftitution, may be corrected agreeable to that very spirit, by the people or nation at large, who form as it were, the high court of appeal in cafes of conftitutional equity; and their sense must be collected from the petitions which they present, expreffed with moderation and refpect, yet with all the firmnefs which their caufe juftifies, and all the dignity which truly becomes them.

If your Lordship received my

letter from Calais, you will not be much surprised to see the date of this, and the place where I now am writing, while Lady Spencer is making morning vifits. Mr. and Mrs. Poyntz have this instant left us. Lord Althorp being in Northamptonshire, I must give myself some confolation for my disap

pointment in miffing him, by fcribbling a few lines to him, as foon as I have finished thefe with which I now trouble your lordship. My excurfion to the United Provinces (which has been the fubftitute for my intended expedition to the United States) was extremely pleafing and improving to me. I returned laft Monday, and finding all my friends difperfed in various parts of England, am going for a few days into Buckinghamshire, whence I fhall go to Oxford, and must continue there till the Seffions. Should your lordship be in Hampshire any time in October, and should it be in all respects con

venient to you, I will accept this year, with great pleasure, the obliging invitation to Chilbolton, which I was unfortunately prevented from accepting last year, I lament the unhappy diffentions among our great men, and clearly see the vanity of my anxious wish, that they would have played in tune fome time longer in the political con

cert.

The delays about the India judgeship have,

Life-V. I.

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it is true, greatly injured me; but with my patience and affiduity, I could easily recover my loft ground. I must however take the liberty here to allude to a moft obliging letter of your lordship from Chilbolton, which I received fo long ago as laft November, but was prevented from answering till you came to town. It was inexpreffibly flattering to me, but my intimate knowledge of the nature of my profeffion, obliges me to affure you, that it requires the whole man, and admits of no concurrent purfuits; that, confequently, I muft either give it up, or it will engrofs me so much, that I fhall not for fome years be able to enjoy the fociety of my friends, or the Sweets of liberty. Whether it be a wife part to live uncomfortably, in order to die wealthy, is another question; but this I know by experience, and have heard old practitioners make the fame obfervation, that a lawyer who is in earneft, muft be chained to his chambers and the bar for ten or twelve years together. In regard to your lordship's indulgent and flattering prediction, that my

Effay on Bailment would be my last work, and that for the future, business and the public would allow me to write no more, I doubt whether it will be accomplished, whatever may be my practice or fituation; for I have already prepared many tracts on jurifprudence; and when I fee the volumes written by Lord Coke, whose annual gains were twelve or fourteen thousand pounds, by Lord Bacon, Sir Matthew Hale, and a number of judges and chancellors, I cannot think that I should be hurt in my profeffional career, by publishing now and then a law tract upon fome interesting branch of the science; and the science itself is indeed fo complex, that, without writing, which is the chain of memory, it is impoffible to remember a thoufandth part of what we read or hear. Since

it is

my with therefore to become in time as great a lawyer as Sulpicius, I fhall probably leave as many volumes of my works, as he is faid to have written. As to politics, I begin to think, that the natural propenfity of men to diffent from one another, will pre

vent them, in a corrupt age, from uniting in any laudable defign; and at prefent I have nothing to do but to rest on my oars, which the Greek philofophers, I believe, called ἐπέχειν, a word which Cicero applies in one of his letters to the same subject.

My best respects to the ladies, for whom I would certainly have brought fome Virginia nightingales, if my western expedition had taken place, fince I was informed by the captain, with whom I fhould have failed, that they might have been kept in the cabin without any danger.

Mr. JONES to Mr. Baron EYRE.

DEAR SIR,

Oct. 2, 1782.

I have been in England about a fortnight, and was made happyby learning in John Street, that you had long been reftored to health from the illness which confined you, to my inexpreffible concern, at the time when I fet out for the Continent. The cause of my return is, in few words, this; I ought to have foreseen, what I never