much idleness as you please to lay to my charge. I do not attempt to make any excuse of the business of Parliament, for very little has been done there; and I have been every whit as indolent with respect to that as to my correspondence. I put off writing to you, as I do about everything else, from day to day, intending to send you a very long letter, partly respecting you, and partly myself. But what I have heard from Fitzgerald lately has hurried me a little, and interested me enough about you to make me very impertinent.
I do most solemnly assure you that you have not a friend in the world more nearly concerned in everything that can happen to you than myself, and you may be sure that I cannot hear of your being unhappy, without being sincerely afflicted. When a man of good sense is completely master of a matter that concerns him—when nothing prevents him from seeing it with all its circumstances in its true light, it is the height of absurdity for any other person to pretend to advise him on the subject. And yet when I consider how warmly all your friends here wish to have you among them, and how very little pleasure or advantage you receive by being absent, I can hardly help entreating you to return, and not to sacrifice us all to so very little purpose. Depend upon it, however, you may pass over a year or two at your present time of life; you will find it more comfortable, as well as more respectable, to pass the principal part of it where your property and all your connections are, than at a distance from both.
If you are angry at the liberty I take, I shall soon be with you to make my excuses in person; and I do assure you a very principal inducement will be to see you, especially at present. Though you have deserted all your friends, you shall not be able to accuse them of deserting you. Our business here will be pretty well over at Easter, and I have no other, at least of a pleasanter kind, to detain me.
Our friend Burgh has played the most comical part in the world for a minister. He has laboured hard to keep up his character with both parties, but he has been very unsuccessful. He has acted against Government on one or two occasions, but has taken special care that the questions should be of no sort of consequence. In everything of importance
