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 possest 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 understanding of the people.
At every step of my progress in life--for in every step was I
traversed and opposed--and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to
shew my passport, and again and again to prove my sole title to the
honor of being useful to my country by a proof that I was not wholly
unacquainted with its laws, and the whole system of its interests both
abroad and at home. Otherwise, no rank, no toleration even for me. I
had no arts but manly arts. On them I have stood, and, please God, in
spite of the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to the last
gasp will I stand....
I know not how it has happened, but it really seems that, while his
Grace was meditating his well-considered censure upon me, he fell into
a sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the Duke of Bedford may dream; and as
dreams--even his golden dreams--are apt to be ill-pieced and
incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach
to me, but took the subject-matter from the crown-grants to his own
family. This is "the stuff of which his dreams are made." In that way
of putting things together, his Grace is perfectly in the right. The
grants to the house of Russell were so enormous as not only to outrage
economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the
leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his
unwieldy bulk; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty.
Huge as he is, and while "he lies floating many a rood," he is still a
creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very
spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his
origin, and covers me all over with the spray--everything of him and
about him is from the throne. Is it for _him_ to question the
dispensation of the royal favor?
I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between the public
merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the grants he holds, and
these services of mine, on the favorable construction of which I have
obtained what his Grace so much disapproves. In private life, I have
not at all the honor of acquaintance with the noble Duke. But I ought
to presume, and it costs me nothing to do so, that he abundantly
deserves the esteem and love of all who live with him. But as to
public service, why, truly, it would not be more ridiculous for me to
compare myself in rank, in fortune, in splendid descent, in youth,
strength, or figure, with the Duke of Bedford, than to make a
parallel between his services and my attempts to be useful to my
country. It would not be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say
that he has any public merit of his own, to keep alive the idea of the
services by which his vast landed pensions were obtained. My merits,
whatever they are, are original and personal; his are derivative. It
is his ancestor, the original pensioner, that has laid up this
inexhaustible fund of merit, which makes his Grace so very delicate
and exceptious about the merit of all other grantees of the crown. Had
he permitted me to remain in quiet, I should have said: "'Tis his
estate; that's enough. It is his by law; what have I to do with it or
its history?" He would naturally have said on his side: "'Tis this
man's fortune. He is as good now as my ancestor was two hundred and
fifty years ago. I am a young man with very old pensions: he is an old
man with very young pensions--that's all."
Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to compare
my little merit with that which obtained from the crown those
prodigies of profuse donation by which he tramples on the mediocrity
of humble and laborious individuals?... Since the new grantees have
war made on them by the old, and that the word of the sovereign is not
to be taken, let us turn our eyes to history, in which great men have
always a pleasure in contemplating the heroic origin of their house.
The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, was a
Mr. Russell, a person of an ancient gentleman's family, raised by
being a minion of Henry VIII. As there generally is some resemblance
of character to create these relations, the favorite was in all
likelihood much such another as his master. The first of those
immoderate grants was not taken from the ancient demesne of the crown,
but from the recent confiscation of the ancient nobility of the land.
The lion having sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass
to the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food of confiscation,
the favorites became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favorite's first
grant was from the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving on
the enormity of the first, was from the plunder of the church. In
truth, his Grace is somewhat excusable for his dislike to a grant like
mine, not only in its quantity, but in its kind, so different from his
own.
Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign; his, from Henry VIII.
Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person of
illustrious rank, or in the pillage of any body of unoffending men;
his grants were from the aggregate and consolidated funds of judgments
iniquitously legal, and from possessions voluntarily surrendered by
the lawful proprietors with the gibbet at their door.
The merit of the grantee whom he derives from was that of being a
prompt and greedy instrument of a leveling tyrant, who opprest all
descriptions of his people, but who fell with particular fury on
everything that was great and noble. Mine has been in endeavoring to
screen every man, in every class, from oppression, and particularly in
defending the high and eminent, who in the bad times of confiscating
princes, confiscating chief-governors, or confiscating demagogs, are
the most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and envy.
The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pensions was in
giving his hand to the work, and partaking the spoil with a prince who
plundered a part of the national church of his time and country. Mine
was in defending the whole of the national church of my own time and
my own country, and the whole of the national churches of all
countries, from the principles and the examples which lead to
ecclesiastical pillage, thence to a contempt of all prescriptive
titles, thence to the pillage of all property, and thence to universal
desolation.
The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a favorite
and chief adviser to a prince who left no liberty to his native
country. My endeavor was to obtain liberty for the municipal country
in which I was born, and for all descriptions and denominations in it.
Mine was to support, with unrelaxing vigilance, every right, every
privilege, every franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more
comprehensive country; and not only to preserve those rights in this
chief seat of empire, but in every nation, in every land, in every
climate, language, and religion in the vast domain that still is under
the protection, and the larger that was once under the protection, of
the British crown.