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LETTERS OF

capacity. A better understanding might make him sensible of the wonderful beauty of that system he was endeavouring to corrupt; the danger of the attempt might alarm him; the meanness and intrinsic worthlessness of the object (supposing he could attain it) would fill him with shame, repentance, and disgust. But these are sensations which find no entrance into a barbarous, contracted heart. In some men there is a malignant passion to destroy the works of genius, literature, and freedom. The Vandal and the Monk find equal gratification in it.

Reflections like these, my Lord, have a general relation to your grace, and inseparably attend you, in whatever company or situation your character occurs to us. They have no immediate connexion with the following recent fact, which I lay before the public, for the honour of the best of sovereigns, and for the edification of his people.

A prince (whose piety and self denial, one would think, might secure him from such a multitude of worldly necessities,) with an annual revenue of near a million sterling, unfortunately wants money. The navy of