children were affected by his sentence, it filled him with the deepest resentment; and in the recollection of all that he and his family endured, he breaks out into a strain of the most intense animosity against all who were trying to crush him.
"What!" he exclaims, "I am to forgive, am I, injuries like this; and that, too, without any atonement? Oh no! I have not so read the Holy Scriptures; I have not from them learned that I am not to rejoice at the fall of unjust foes; and it makes a part of my happiness to be able to tell millions of men that I do thus rejoice, and that I have the means of calling on so many just and merciful men to rejoice along with me."
Shut up in Newgate, he continued his Weekly Register, his chief solace being a hamper which he received every week from Botley, containing fruit and country fare, specimens of plants, bulbs, and roots. Each child sent him a letter, and some of his or her most beautiful flowers. Moreover, the hamper always contained a journal of the week's labours, proceedings, and occurrences. After a time he had one or more of his children with him, to carry on his correspondence. But he had seen the meridian of his prosperity. The vindictive sentence passed upon him, with the immense expense it entailed, and the confusion into which it brought all his affairs, was the primary cause of the pecuniary troubles which henceforth dogged his steps.
His sanguine temperament did not foresee these disasters, and the two years in Newgate passed quickly away, thanks to his indefatigable industry. When he came out of prison a dinner was given to him in London, at which 600 persons were present. When he went home he was welcomed at Alton by the ringing of the church bells; by another dinner, which was given him at Winchester; and finally his neighbours met him on the road, and dragged him for more than a mile into Botley.
The great war into which England plunged in 1793 was openly avowed to be a political one. "It was necessary," its supporters said, "to excite the English people against France, in order to prevent French principles from spreading and fixing themselves England." When Fox spoke of the misery and privation such war would occasion to the bulk of the people, Burke contemptuously replied, "The ground of a political war is of all things that
