‘Elizabeth Hoole.’
From J. Symonds, Esq.
‘Cambridge: March 27, 1795.
‘My dear Sir,—I am to thank you for two letters, which should not have lain unanswered if a retirement like mine would have furnished me with any materials. However, I must take notice of your way of arguing. You say “the people in France are starved, and assignats are destroyed,” with significant dashes. You told me just the same in 1793 and 1794, and venture it once more. Assuredly you seem to reason like the old wizard Tiresias in Horace, “Quicquid dicam aut erit aut non.” Whether your predictions be verified or not, you assume, like Tiresias, to speak the truth.
‘I always thought with you, that Mr. Pitt would receive no real benefit from his new friends; but I have heard the Duke of Grafton say that he would not have entered on the war if he had not been able to detach some from the Opposition. If this be so, there is great reason to lament that he could detach them.
‘We have received here the Bishop of Llandaff’s speech on the Duke of Bedford’s motion, published by Debrett. It amazed me to find that the Bishop of Durham ventured to speak after him. A gentleman who heard them both says that Watson’s was rich, clouted cream, and Barrington’s thin, meagre, blue skim milk, frothed up with an egg, but with so weak a froth that it rose only to fall instantly. We are told that after Æschines was banished, in consequence of Demosthenes’ speech de coronâ, one of Æschines’ friends carried to him in his banishment a copy of Demosthenes’ speech; on which the former said, “But what if you had heard it?”
‘Two fellows of this college, who heard Watson, bear the same ample testimony to the excellent manner in which he delivered it.
‘You tell me “that our situation is prosperous beyond all example;” I should think so too if it were unnecessary to multiply loans. The complaints of the dearness of the necessaries of life seem to pervade the whole island, and I fear they must still be dearer. If we be forced to persist in this war (and how are we to get out of it, it is difficult to see) the middle class of the people, of which you and I form a part, must be driven down to the lower. They hold it is a principle not to tax the lower, but to tax luxuries, so that the middle class will be forced to abandon everything but necessaries, and then the upper class must pay all. This, to use your words, “must render us prosperous beyond all example.” I rather accede to Charles Coles’ declaration in his last letter to me: “Alas! our glory is gone to decay.” A day or two ago I was looking into the famous pamphlet of my old friend, Israel Mauduit,[[163]] on the German war, in which I stumbled on the following sentence, very applicable to our entering into this just war to save the Dutch: “Is Britain to make itself the general knight errant of Europe, to rescue oppressed States, and exhaust itself in order to save men in spite of themselves, who will not do anything towards their own deliverance?” Adieu!
‘Yours sincerely,
‘J. Symonds.’