Meanwhile, the difference between the two statesmen became more fixed and intense.  The Whig Club declared, “that their confidence in Mr. Fox was confirmed, strengthened, and increased by the calumnies against him.”  Burke and some forty-five noblemen and gentlemen withdrew from the club.  It was then that Burke, in justification of himself and his friends, took the pen, and drew up what his biographer Prior calls the “famous” paper, entitled, “Observations on the Conduct of the Minority, particularly in the Last Session of Parliament, addressed to the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam, 1793,” which will be found in the third volume of Bonn’s edition of his Works.

This paper presents, in fifty-four articles, duly numbered, objections to the course and policy of Fox.  It was, in brief, an arraignment of that distinguished gentleman.  But it was not intended for publication, at least at that time.  It was transmitted to the Duke of Portland, with a letter, asking that it might not even be read at once, but that the Duke would keep it locked in the drawer of his library-table, and when a day of compulsory reflection came, then be pleased to turn to it.  Communicated thus in confidence, it might have remained indefinitely, if not always, unknown to the public, locked in the ducal drawer, if the amanuensis whom Burke employed in copying it had not betrayed him.  This was none other than Swift, to whom the familiar letters were addressed.  Unknown to his employer, he had appropriated to himself a copy in his own handwriting, with corrections and additions by Burke, which seems to have come between the original rough draught and the final copy transmitted to the Duke of Portland.  Some time afterwards, while Burke was in his last illness, feeble and failing fast, this faithless scrivener communicated this copy to an equally faithless publisher, by whom it was advertised as “Fifty-Four Articles of Impeachment against the Eight Honorable C.J.  Fox.”  When this was seen by Mrs. Burke, she felt it her duty to keep all newspapers and letters from her husband, that he might know nothing of the treachery, at least until it was relieved so far as it could be.  Dr. Lawrence and Dr. King, assisted by the affidavit of Mr. Rivington, succeeded in obtaining an injunction against the publisher on the very day when the tract appeared.  But two thousand copies had already stolen abroad.

It was not until Mrs. Burke, on opening a letter from Dr. Lawrence to her husband, learned that the injunction had been obtained, that, at two o’clock in the afternoon of the 15th of February, 1797, she delivered to him his newspapers and correspondence for the past week.  He was less disturbed than had been expected.  “This affair does vex me,” he said; “but I am not in a state of health at present to be deeply vexed at anything.  Had I intended it for the public, I should have been more exact and full.  Many temperaments and explanations there would have