him the recent attempts to awaken party animosities, have not, I am convinced, originated; because I can discover no motive which he could have for furbishing up the old story of Lord Holland and unaccounted millions other than that of dividing the public attention, of diverting, for a moment, a portion of that attention from the conduct of Lord Melville and Mr. Pitt; and, at the same time, to throw some degree of odium on the name, at least, of Mr. Fox, that Mr. Fox, whom he so recently and so highly praised, and at not seeing whom in the cabinet he expressed his regret; a motive which it would be monstrous to impute to him. No: the insinuations in the 3d paragraph of the . libel and in the body of the petition procee ed, I am fully persuaded, neither from the pen nor the mind of Mr. Stuart; but from those of some envious and venernous upstart, who, perhaps, in his haste to attain the summit of that power, of which his foot never ought to have touched the first step, would, had he capacity equal to his will, sting where be cannot betray, and degrade where he cannot destroy, every one whom he regards as an obstacle to the accomplishment of his pre"Curst sumptuous and insolent desires.

66 cows, however, according to the old saying, "have short horns;" and thus it has appeared in the present case, where the attempt to wound has injured nobody but the assailant and his friends. Miserable is the man, or the party, driven to accept of the support of an upstart, and happy all those who are the objects of his malice; for, of such creatures,

"It is the slaver kills, and not the bite." Read the history of the those princes and ministers, whose career has terminated in disgrace, and say how few of them have not owed their downfall to some political being of their own creation; to some upstart, whom, in the luxury of their power, in a refinement in their contempt for the habits, opinions, and feelings of mankind, they have invested with authority, which, in such hands, has finally become insupportable to any but the basest of minds. Of all de

symptoms of political decline the prominence of upstarts is the surest. It is not till the crown of the oak is blasted, till his heart is rotten, till his roots are loosened, till he rocks with every wind, till he trembles even at the zephyr, that the fungus shoots up from his stem.

Having thus stated the reasons, which induce me to believe, that Mr. Stuart ought not to be regarded as the author of the publications in question, I shall now, Sir, procced to describe the three points, which, in the present letter, it is any intention to dis

cuss. 1. The case of the late LORD HOLLAND, as compared with that of LORD MELVILLE.-2. The nature and tendency of the libel published in the Oracle of the 26th ultimo, compared with publications in general, touching upon the proceedings in Parliament.- -3. The injudiciousness of the writer, in selecting your name, under which to publish a threat against the editors of public papers, and that of Sir Henry Mildmay, under which to make a sort of protest against an alleged attempt to abridge the liberty of the press as to parliamentary proceedings; which point will naturally extend to an inquiry into the example af forded us by that weekly newspaper of which you were the principal conductor, and also to the relation of an occurrence which will tend to show whether the writer in the Oracle has truly represented the real disposi tion of Sir Henry Mildmay, and which occurrence, though quite of a public nature, is known to very few persons except that gentleman and myself.

FIRST; let us suppose, for a moment, that the case of Lord Holland, the father of Mr. Fox, had borne an exact resemblance, in all its parts, to the case of Lord Melville, instead, as will be found to be the case, of resembling it in no one particular. Let us suppose this; what has Mr. Fox to do with the matter? Ought he to be reproached with his father's misconduct? Ought he, supposing his father to have been guilty of a gross violation of the law and a high breach of duty, to be reviled because he is endea vouring to cause a similar offence to be punished in another man? Whither, Sir, would such a principle lead us? Most assuredly to the exclusion from public authority of every one whose ancestors (for there is no knowing when to stop) have been guilty of such offences against the public; for, if a person so descended has no right, if it be unjustor indecorous in him, to use his utmost endeavours to bring peculators to punishment, he certainly ought never to be placed in any post of public trust. The upstart writer has, therefore, only to persuade us to adopt this principle and the way will soon be cleared before him; for scarcely a man will be found eligible to power, except he has sprung from ancestors who had the good fortune never to be known, even perhaps, to their own children. This sweeping principle, however we shall not, at the modest suggestion of this upstart, adopt. In giving us a picture of injustice calculated to make a deep impression of abhorrence on our minds, the moralist has represented a ferocious beast, resolved to devour his neighbour but having

no good ground of complaint against him, and receiving from him an assurance of his innocence, exclaiming, " that's nothing to "me: if it was not you, it was your father." But, Sir, where is the man amongst us, however low and obscure his origin, who would be willing to be made answerable for the faults of his ancestors? I should not, for those of mine. Would you, Sir, for the faults of yours? And, if we, whose ancestors had the good fortune to live in "a snug privacy," as Bobadil calls it; if we should think it hard to be called to account for their faults, what, if this retrospective censorship were established, would be the lot of those, the deeds of whose progeni tors, for centuries past, have been carefully recorded? What, for instance, if, upon reading the petition of Mr. Stuart, boasting of his joint labours with Lord Melville in the cause of loyalty; what, if upon reading tnis petition, and seeing the writer state, that it was presented by Sir Henry Mildmay, some one were to exclaim, what! Sir Henry Mildmay the friend of loyalty! Sir Henry Mildmay, the descendant of a family having in it the most infamous of all the English regicides! He a friend to loyalty, who bears the names, of the man, of whom Clarendon says, that "he "had been loaded with so great favours and "bounties by King James and by his Majesty (King Charles I.) that he was raised by them to great estate, that no man was more obsequious to the court than he "whilst it flourished, being a great flatterer "of all persons in authority, and a spie in all

places for them, and yet who, from the beginning of the parliament, concurred "with those most violent against the court,

that the party of miscreants, their fellow "Commissioners, locked upon no two men "in the kingdom with such scorn and de"testation as they did upon D'Anvers and Mildmay!" If, any one, upon reading in the Oracle, that Sir Henry Mildmay presented and eulogized die petition of Mr. St-]

art, boasting of his loyalty, had, in the above manner burst forth with regard to the family of the worthy Baronet, what would have been the feelings of the public? Would they not have been the feelings of astonishment and scorn at a mode of attack so novel, so foul, and so audibly expressive of the badness of. the cause, as well as of the meanness and malignity of the assailant? And, if, in such case, these would have been their feelings, who shall express the contempt, which they now do, and which they ought to, entertain towards all those, who have resorted to simi-. lar means of assailing Mr. Fox?—Thus far, Sir, I have proceeded upon the supposition of a perfect similarity in the case of Lord Holland and that of Lord Melville; and, if, under that view of the matter, we can find no. justification for those who have now revived the case of the former for the evident and, avowed purpose of thwarting and checking his son in his laudable endeavours to bring Lord Melville to justice; if, even under that view of the matter, we are, upon every principle of honour and justice, called on to condemn the conduct of those persons, what will they merit at our hands, when it shall appear, as, from what is about to be stated, I am satisfied it will, that there is no similarity in the cases, and that, in the case of Lord Holland, the fault was not in the man, but altogether in the office, while, in the case of Lord Melville, we well know, that the fault was not in the office, but altogether in the man? But, Sir, before we enter on this statement, in which I shall be compelled to be very brief, it is not unnecessary to observe, that that part of Mr. Stuart's publication, which relates to Lord Holland and to Mr. Fox, I mean the 3d and last paragraph, was not included in the subject of Mr. Grey's complaint. Mr. Fox appears to have been willing to leave it to the contempt of the public; and, I must request you to recollect, that, according to a statement in the Oracle of the 20th, this 3d paragraph never would have been read to the Flouse had not the reading of it been moved for, as the ORACLE tells us, by Mr. Robert Ward, ab under Secretary of State. Mr. Fox, after the para-graph had been read, very pertinently asked, whether the gentlemen on the opposite side regarded this attack upon him personally, as a palliation of the foregoing attack upon the House.

Mr. Ward, one would think, could hardly have viewed it in that light; Mr. Ward, who, though in a pamphlet the mat ter of which was stole aid diluted while s manner was excessively dull, had spoken i terms the most contemptuous of Mr. Af dington's ministry, comprizing elmat di

that cabinet to which Mr. Fox is now opposed; Mr. Ward, who, in the same pamphlet, had treated with indignation the assertion of the Addington writers, that Mr. Fox was fit to be a French prefect of a Britan"nic Republic, and not the minister of a "British King;" Mr. Ward, who, in recommending an union of the great public character and talents of the country, thus expressed his regret at not seeing it likely immediately to take place: "We are game"sters of a most dangerous, a most dreadful "order: our play is for neither more nor "less than the existence of Britain, and the

66

King's crown. "should be an end of party. All the opposing "benches in the House of Commons pre"sent abilities that might yet save the na"nation. Can any one refuse to say, that "Mr. Fox's mind is of the very first class? "It is dreadful to think, that the whole of "this ability is excluded from the cabinet !” I think, Sir, it will be allowed, that the malice of the writer in the Oracle got the better of his prudence, when he represented this same Mr. Ward as anxious to feast his ears with the repetition, in open Parliament, of a paragraph evidently intended, though quite uselessly employed, to wound the feelings and to degrade the character of Mr. Fox.--Coming now to a comparison between the case of the late Lord Holland and that of Lord Melville, we must first observe, that Lord Holland was Paymaster of the Forces at a time when the regulations, and the very constitution of that office, not only permitted large balances of the public money to be kept in the hands of the Paymaster, but rendered it almost impossible that he should not hold such balances. The money, issued from the Exchequer for the service of the army, was issued directly to the Paymaster, who, therefore, was, in that respect, a great banker of government, keeping the money in his hands, compelled, indeed, to keep it in his hands, till it was called for in payment of the army services. It has been thought by some, that while it remained in hishands, he ought not to have made use of it; hat others have thought, and still think, that he had a legal right to make use of it; and, indeed, the legality of the practice seems to have been recognized by Parliament, when they, at the recommendation of the Commissioners of Accounts, granted an addition to the fixed salary of the Paymaster, in teu of all other perquisites, emoluments and profits whatever, amongst which was expressly included the emolument arising in the use theretofore made of the balances of the public money in his hands. It will be remembered, that the Paymaster's

Could wishes decide there

lieu

Office and that of the Treasurer of the Navy, were, at the time I am speaking of, and, indeed, till the year 1782, upon nearly the same footing. Upon looking back into the. reports and accounts, laid, at different times, within these last twenty years before Parlia ment, we find that the practice of using the public money, while in the hands of the Paymaster of the Army and the Treasurer of the Navy, was universal, as well as the practice of keeping, for many years, an account open with each Paymaster and Treasurer, after he had quitted his office. He or (in case of his death) his representative, was obliged to settle all the accounts he had opened; and, to those who take but a moment to reflect on the multiplicity of the accounts he was obliged to open; on the difficulty of settling with the accountants in the colonies, and with the executors or representatives of others; to such persons it will not appear surprizing, that every Paymas ter as well as Treasurer left his public accounts to be settled by the succeeding generation. To hear the venomous writer in the ORACLE, Sir, one would imagine, that the accounts of no other Paymaster then Lord Hollaud ever were in a situation similar to his; but, if we look into the financial statements laid beore Parliament, we find, that the executors of Mr. Rigby are still paying in part of his balance as Ex-Paymaster of the Forces; that the Executor of Lady Greenwich, Executrix of the Rt. Hon. Charles Townsend, is paying in part of that gentleman's balance as Ex-Paymaster of the Forces; and, in the returns of no older a date than 1798, we find the representatives of the Rt. Hon. George Grenville (the father, I believe, of the Marquis of Buckingham, &c., &c.) paying in money on his account as ExTreasurer of the Navy. The fault was, as I said before, in the office, and not in the man. The office was constituted at a time when the expenditure was a mere trifle, compared to what it had grown to during the official period of Lord Holland. Bank paper, and all the operations connected therewith had increased tenfold before he quitted the office; and, the many discussions and inquiries relative to the subject only tended to demonstrate, that, to have avoided the embarrassments and defalcations, in which he was inveved, would have required powers of prevention more than have ever yet fallen to the let of any human being. At last, the evil could be endured no longer; it was found upon repeated trials, that no degree of vigiLince and punctuality in the officer could prevent its continuation as long as the vices of the office continued. These vices were, therefore, renoved: the constitution of the