You may be sure, my dear lord, that I heartily pity Lady Strafford’s and your loss of four-legged friends.  Sense and fidelity are wonderful recommendations; and when one meets with them, and can be confident that one is not imposed upon, I cannot think that the two additional legs are any drawback.  At least I know that I have had friends who would never have vexed or betrayed me, if they had walked on all-fours.

I have no news to send your lordship; indeed I inquire for none, nor wish to hear any.  Whence is any good to come?  I am every day surprised at hearing people eager for news.  If there is any, they are sure of hearing it.  How can one be curious to know one does not know what; and perpetually curious to know?  Has one nothing to do but to hear and relate something new?  And why can one care about nothing but what one does not know?  And why is every event worth hearing, only because one has not heard it?  Have not there been changes enough? divorces enough? bankruptcies and robberies enough? and, above all, lies enough?  No:  or people would not be everyday impatient for the newspaper.  I own, I am glad on Sunday when there is no paper(508) and no fresh lies circulating.  Adieu, my good lord and lady!  May you long enjoy your tranquillity, undisturbed by villany, folly, and madness!

(505) The Volunteer Corps of Ireland had long entertained projects for reforming the parliamentary representation of the country, and had appointed delegates for carrying that object into effect.  In September they met at Dungannon when a plan of reform was proposed and agreed upon, and the 10th of November fixed on for a convention at Dublin of the representatives of the whole body of Volunteers.  “Many gentlemen,” says Mr. Hardy, in his Memoirs of Lord Charlemont, “must have seen a letter of Mr. Fox, then secretary of state, to General Burgoyne, at that time commander-in-chief in Ireland, on the subject Convention.  It was written with the spirit of a patriot and wisdom of a true statesman.  In his ardour for a parliamentary reform, he yielded, he said, to none of the Convention, but he dreaded the consequences of such a proceeding; and would, he added, lament it as the deepest misfortune of his life, if, by any untoward Steps then taken, and whilst he was minister, the two kingdoms should be separated, or run the Slightest risk of separation."-E.

(506) “The Yorkshire Association had been formed in 1779, from the gentry of moderate fortunes and the more substantial yeomen., under the pressure of those burdens which resulted from the war with America, with the view of obtaining, first, an economical, and then a parliamentary reform; but in the various changes which soon afterwards perplexed the political world, its first object was almost forgotten, and its most important character was the front Of Opposition which it now maintained against that powerful aristocracy which had long ruled the country with absolute dominion.  It now declared against the Coalition administration.”  Life of Wilberforce, vol. i. p. 51.-E.