reasons for admiring your defence.  You have placed that defence on sound and nezo grounds; and, though very briefly, have very learnedly stated and distinguished the landmarks of our constitution, and the encroachments made on it, by justly referring the principles of liberty to the Saxon systern, and by imputing the corruptions of it to the Norman.  This was a great deal too deep for that superficial mountebank, Hume, to go; for a mountebank he was.  He mounted a system in the garb of a philosophic empiric, but dispensed no drugs but what he was authorized to vend by a royal patent, and which were full of Turkish opium.  He had studied nothing relative to the English constitution before Queen Elizabeth, and had selected her most arbitrary acts to countenance those of the Stuarts:  and even hers he misrepresented; for her worst deeds were levelled against the nobility, those of the Stuarts against the people.  Hers, consequently, were rather an obligation to the people; for the most heinous part of despotism is, that it produces a thousand despots instead of one.  Muley Moloch cannot lop off many heads with his own hands; at least, he takes those in his way. those of his courtiers; but his bashaws and viceroys spread destruction every where.  The flimsy, ignorant, blundering manner in which Hume executed the reigns preceding Henry the Seventh, is a proof how little he had examined the history of our constitution.

I could say much, much more, Sir, in commendation of your work, were I not apprehensive of being biassed by the subject.  Still, that it would not be from flattery, I wilt prove, by taking the liberty of making two objections; and they are only to the last page but one.  Perhaps you will think that my first objection does show that I am too much biassed.  I own I am sorry to see my father compared to Sylla.  The latter was a sanguinary usurper, a monster; the former, the mildest, most forgiving, best-natured of men, and a legal minister.  Nor, I fear, will the only light in which you compare them, Stand The test.  Sylla resigned his power voluntarily, insolently:  perhaps timidly. as he might think he had a better chance of dying in his bed, if he retreated, than by continuing to rule by force.  My father did not retire by his own option.  He had lost the majority of the House of Commons.  Sylla, you say, Sir, retired unimpeached; it is true, but covered with blood.  My father was not impeached, in our strict sense, Of the word; but, to my great joy, he was in effect.  A secret committee, a worse inquisition than a jury, was named; not to try him, but to sift his life for crimes:  and Out Of Such a jury, chosen in the dark, and not one of whom he might challenge, he had some determined enemies, many opponents, and but two he could suppose his friends.  And what was the consequence ?  A man charged with every state crime almost, for twenty years, was proved to have done—­what?  Paid some writers much more than they deserved, for having defended him against ten thousand and ten ’thousand libels, (some of which had been written by his inquisitors,) all which libels were confessed to have been lies by his inquisitors themselves; for they could not produce a shadow of one of the crimes with which they had charged him!  I must own, ,Sir, I think that Sylla and my father ought to be set in opposition rather than paralleled.