Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should
have been, according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I
live in, a sort of founder of a family; I should have left a son, who,
in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science,
in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honor, in generosity, in
humanity, in every liberal sentiment and every liberal accomplishment,
would not have shewn himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to
any of those whom he traces in his line. His Grace very soon would
have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which
belonged more to mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every
deficiency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It would not have
been for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting reservoir of
merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient living
spring of generous and manly action. Every day he lived, he would have
repurchased the bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times
more he had received. He was made a public creature, and had no
enjoyment whatever but in the performance of some duty. At this
exigent moment the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied.
But a Disposer, whose power we are little able to resist, and whose
wisdom it behooves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in
another manner, and--whatever my querulous weakness might suggest--a
far better. The storm has gone over me, and I lie like one of those
old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stript
of all my honors; I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the
earth! There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the
divine justice, and in some degree submit to it. But while I humble
myself before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the
attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is
proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of our irritable
nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even
so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable
degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbors of his who
visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures
on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate.
Indeed, my lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I
would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and
honor in the world. This is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury;
it is a privilege; it is an indulgence for those who are at their
ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace, as we are made to
shrink from pain, and poverty, and disease. It is an instinct; and
under the direction of reason, instinct is always in the right. I live
in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded me are gone
before me; they who should have been to me as posterity are in the
place of ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation--which ever must
subsist in memory--that act of piety which he would have performed to
me; I owe it to him to shew, that he was not descended, as the Duke of
Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent.