‘Why did you not let me know whether your second edition had gone to the press or not? Before I left Cambridge I saw a gentleman who told me that Sir William Scott had mentioned in a letter to one of his friends there that it was by far the most convincing and best pamphlet that had been published.
‘All I could wish is that you had not stigmatised all reformers with the name of enemies to the state; or, at least, you intimated it. I was always myself an enemy to reform in Parliament, and continue to be so; yet I know some warm advocates for it, who mean as well to the benefit of this country as you can possibly do.
‘Dr. Hardy and Sir Henry Moncrief (a Scotch clergyman) are come to solicit a Bill for the enlarging of the stipends of the Scotch clergy. They do not apprehend much difficulty in carrying it through the Houses, though the addition must be supplied out of the tithes in the hands of lay proprietors. Hardy is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Edinburgh—a most sensible man, with great liberality of mind. Sir Henry is a polished man, and likewise a man of business. I hope to see them both at St. Edmund’s Hill, and you must meet them. You should get Hardy’s pamphlet, the “Patriot,” published in Scotland on the present emergency; there are in it many excellent things.
‘You seem in your letter to be still apprehensive of some plots and insurrections.
‘Plot! Plots! was the catch-word in King Charles II.’s time. Sir H. Moncrief and Dr. Hardy laughed at Dundas’s account of the political riots in Scotland. They absolutely denied the existence of them—considered them as political; and when you read Hardy’s pamphlet, you will see that he would not have failed setting them forth if they had deserved any consideration.
‘Adieu! I should not have come to London had it not been on account of my ecclesiastical foundling.
‘John Symonds.’
From Dr. Symonds
‘September 1, 1793.
‘My dear Sir,—I do not wonder that you smiled at the affected secrecy of Macpherson concerning the Censomento. The book to which he alludes cannot be the “Bilancio dello stato,” &c., which was written to please Count Firmian. I knew well the gentleman who wrote it and gave it to me, as I often met him at dinner at the count’s.