The awful state of the time, and not myself, or my own justification, is my true object in what I now write, or in what I shall ever write or say.  It little signifies to the world what becomes of such things as me, or even as the Duke of Bedford.  What I say about either of us is nothing more than a vehicle, as you, my Lord, will easily perceive, to convey my sentiments on matters far more worthy of your attention.  It is when I stick to my apparent first subject that I ought to apologize, not when I depart from it.  I therefore must beg your Lordship’s pardon for again resuming it after this very short digression,—­assuring you that I shall never altogether lose sight of such matter as persons abler than I am may turn to some profit.

The Duke of Bedford conceives that he is obliged to call the attention of the House of Peers to his Majesty’s grant to me, which he considers as excessive and out of all bounds.

I know not how it has happened, but it really seems, that, whilst 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 whilst “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