His Grace’s landed possessions are irresistibly inviting to an agrarian experiment.  They are a downright insult upon the rights of man.  They are more extensive than the territory of many of the Grecian republics; and they are without comparison more fertile than most of them.  There are now republics in Italy, in Germany, and in Switzerland, which do not possess anything like so fair and ample a domain.  There is scope for seven philosophers to proceed in their analytical experiments upon Harrington’s seven different forms of republics, in the acres of this one Duke.  Hitherto they have been wholly unproductive to speculation,—­fitted for nothing but to fatten bullocks, and to produce grain for beer, still more to stupefy the dull English understanding.  Abbe Sieyes has whole nests of pigeon-holes full of constitutions ready-made, ticketed, sorted, and numbered, suited to every season and every fancy:  some with the top of the pattern at the bottom, and some with the bottom at the top; some plain, some flowered; some distinguished for their simplicity, others for their complexity; some of blood color, some of boue de Paris; some with directories, others without a direction; some with councils of elders and councils of youngsters, some without any council at all; some where the electors choose the representatives, others where the representatives choose the electors; some in long coats, and some in short cloaks; some with pantaloons, some without breeches; some with five-shilling qualifications, some totally unqualified.  So that no constitution-fancier may go unsuited from his shop, provided he loves a pattern of pillage, oppression, arbitrary imprisonment, confiscation, exile, revolutionary judgment, and legalized premeditated murder, in any shapes into which they can be put.  What a pity it is that the progress of experimental philosophy should be checked by his Grace’s monopoly!  Such are their sentiments, I assure him; such is their language, when they dare to speak; and such are their proceedings, when they have the means to act.

Their geographers and geometricians have been some time out of practice.  It is some time since they have divided their own country into squares.  That figure has lost the charms of its novelty.  They want new lands for new trials.  It is not only the geometricians of the Republic that find him a good subject:  the chemists have bespoke him, after the geometricians have done with him.  As the first set have an eye on his Grace’s lands, the chemists are not less taken with his buildings.  They consider mortar as a very anti-revolutionary invention, in its present state, but, properly employed, an admirable material for overturning all establishments.  They have found that the gunpowder of ruins is far the fittest for making other ruins, and so ad infinitum.  They have calculated what quantity of matter convertible into nitre is to be found in Bedford House, in Woburn Abbey, and in