and alert, we can contrive to profit of the occasions as they arise:  though I am sensible that those who are best provided with a general scheme are fittest to take advantage of all contingencies.  However, to act with any people with the least degree of comfort, I believe we must contrive a little to assimilate to their character.  We must gravitate towards them, if we would keep in the same system, or expect that they should approach towards us.  They are, indeed, worthy of much concession and management.  I am quite convinced that they are the honestest public men that ever appeared in this country, and I am sure that they are the wisest, by far, of those who appear in it at present.  None of those who are continually complaining of them, but are themselves just as chargeable with all their faults, and have a decent stock of their own into the bargain.  They (our friends) are, I admit, as you very truly represent them, but indifferently qualified for storming a citadel.  After all, God knows whether this citadel is to be stormed by them, or by anybody else, by the means they use, or by any means.  I know that as they are, abstractedly speaking, to blame, so there are those who cry out against them for it, not with a friendly complaint, as we do, but with the bitterness of enemies.  But I know, too, that those who blame them for want of enterprise have shown no activity at all against the common enemy:  all their skill and all their spirit have been shown only in weakening, dividing, and indeed destroying their allies.  What they are and what we are is now pretty evidently experienced; and it is certain, that, partly by our common faults, but much more by the difficulties of our situation, and some circumstances of unavoidable misfortune, we are in little better than a sort of cul-de-sac.  For my part, I do all I can to give ease to my mind in this strange position.  I remember, some years ago, when I was pressing some points with great eagerness and anxiety, and complaining with great vexation to the Duke of Richmond of the little progress I make, he told me kindly, and I believe very truly, that, though he was far from thinking so himself, other people could not be persuaded I had not some latent private interest in pushing these matters, which I urged with an earnestness so extreme, and so much approaching to passion.  He was certainly in the right.  I am thoroughly resolved to give, both to myself and to my friends, less vexation on these subjects than hitherto I have done,—­much less, indeed.

If you should grow too earnest, you will be still more inexcusable than I was.  Your having entered into affairs so much younger ought to make them too familiar to you to be the cause of much agitation, and you have much more before you for your work.  Do not be in haste.  Lay your foundations deep in public opinion.  Though (as you are sensible) I have never given you the least hint of advice about joining yourself in a declared connection with our