'On such conditions and with such views, I confidently entered with you into a partnership which unhappily cannot be dissolved. The irrevocable contract was scarcely ratified before it was violated. With a temper habitually gloomy and suspicious, and a mind incapable of bending to those inevitable little anxieties and vexations which occur in the most quiet families, you soon discovered your propensity to repel every thing that your jealous and fanciful temper deemed an infringement of your privileges.
'Let your own heart testify how long and how ardently I endeavoured, by mildness and the most simple and convincing reasons, to bring you back to your duty. But in vain: causes of disagreement became so frequent, and injury succeeded injury so fast, that I was obliged to proceed to those gentle severities which are all that a husband, who preserves a proper respect for himself, can inflict. And gentle they certainly were, when compared to the contumely by which they were provoked. I forbore those tender and endearing epithets, by which former affection should be continually revived. I then avoided and indeed refused to converse with you, except in the company of a third person or as far as necessity obliged me. Sorry am I to say that, instead of warning you to shun the rocks of mischief, my efforts did but aggravate your folly.
'It is true you had your hours of contrition, in which, with tears and prayers and unbounded acknowledgments of the absurdity of your conduct, together with solemn assurances of reformation, you have for a moment recalled my lost love, and made me hope you would acquire some power over the discordant passions that devoured you. But these promises were so often repeated, and so continually forgotten, that at length they afforded neither hope nor ease: they had only been gleams of sunshine, foreboding that the tempest would soon return with increasing violence. Yes, partial as I know you, and blind to your own errors, you cannot deny that at last you approached the fury, rather than the woman.
'To a man like me, of a delicate temper, quick at discovering errors and eager to redress them, even in cases where they do not personally affect myself but indefatigable where they do, this eternal discord, these quarrels and despicable brawls are become insupportable. I have endured the torture seven miserable years, and surely that is no slight trial: surely that is sufficient to prove I have not wanted patience or fortitude. To be a good husband and a provident father, and to protect those that depend on me from injury and want, are qualities which I believe the whole world will allow me, you alone excepted. You upbraid me with faults; you accuse me of crimes; you proclaim me a tyrant. When I am gone, when your passions have subsided, and when you feel the want of me, you will be more just. You will then lament that nothing, short of this desperate proof, could convince you of the criminality of your conduct.
'Where I shall seek, where find, or where endure existence, or to what hospitable or inhospitable shore I shall wander, I know not yet: I only know that in England it cannot, shall not be. We have lived long enough in misery; which, everlastingly to avoid, seas or death shall everlastingly divide us.
W. ELFORD.'
This letter, although it contained many marks of that impatience which had increased his family misfortunes, could only have been written by a man of virtue, whose very austerity had in it a preponderance of benevolent intention. Such was my uncle; whose memory, though but a child, I often had occasion to regret.
By various plausible pretexts, with the hope of forwarding a fortune that was to descend to me, Mr. Elford had been prevailed on to lend my father several sums of money, to the amount of seven hundred pounds. My uncle too had found other occasions for the exercise of his humanity. His property had been hastily sold, and therefore disadvantageously, so that the sum with which he went to seek his fortune on foreign shores was but small. He was enough acquainted with my father's affairs to know that of the money lent to him there was little hope.
To me he wrote a letter which will sufficiently shew how kind he would have been, had he possessed the power. It was inclosed in one to my father, with directions to suffer me to read it now, and that it should be preserved and given to me when age should have matured my understanding. The following were its contents.