baseness may administer a solid satisfaction to the royal mind. The man I speak of has not a heart to feel for the frailties of his fellow-creatures. It is their virtues that afflict, it is their vices that console him.
I give every possible advantage to Mr. Horne, when I take the facts he refers to for granted. That they are the produce of his invention, seems highly probable; that they are exaggerated, I have no doubt. At the worst, what do they amount to, but that Mr. Wilkes, who never was thought of as a perfect pattern of morality, has not been at all times proof against the extremity of distress. How shameful is it in a man who has lived in friendship with him, to reproach him with failings too naturally connected with despair? Is no allowance to be made for banishment and ruin? Does a two years imprisonment make no atonement for his crimes?—The resentment of a priest is implacable: no sufferings can soften, no penitence can appease him.—Yet he himself, I think, upon his own system, has a multitude of political offences to atone for. I will not insist upon the nauseous detail with which he so long disgusted the public; he seems to be ashamed of it.
