‘Dear Sir,—I am on the point of leaving Bath, having no further hope of benefit from these waters; and as soon as I get home (if I should live to get home) should I find the papers transmitted me by your Board I shall send them faithfully to you; though, to say the truth, I do not think them of very great importance.
‘My constant opinion was, and is, that all matters relative to labour ought to be left to the conversations of the parties. That the great danger is in Government intermeddling too much. What I should have taken the liberty of addressing to you, had I possessed strength to go through it, would be to illustrate or enforce that principle.
‘I am extremely sorry that any one in the House of Commons should be found so ignorant and unadvised as to wish to revive the senseless, barbarous, and, in fact, wicked regulations made against free trade in matters of provision which the good sense of late Parliaments had removed. I am the more concerned at the measure, as I was myself the person who moved the repeal of the absurd code of statutes against the most useful of all trades, under the invidious names of forestalling and regrating. But, however, I console myself on this point by considering that it is not the only breach by which barbarism is entering upon us. It is, indeed, but a poor consolation, and one taken merely from the balance of misfortunes.
‘You have titles enough of your own to pass your name to posterity, and I am pleased that you have got spirit enough to hope that there will be such a thing as a civilised posterity to attend to things of this kind.
‘I have the honour to be,
‘With very high respect and esteem,
‘Your most obedient, humble servant,
‘Edmund Burke.’
Mr. Burke died July 7 [note by A. Y.].
From John Symonds, Esq., on public affairs, very gloomy, with much condemnation of Mr. Pitt.