mpotent and useless.

At present it is the plan of the court to make its servants
insignificant. If the people should fall into the same humor, and should
choose their servants on the same principles of mere obsequiousness and
flexibility and total vacancy or indifference of opinion in all public
matters, then no part of the state will be sound, and it will be in vain
to think of saving it.

I thought it very expedient at this time to give you this candid
counsel; and with this counsel I would willingly close, if the matters
which at various times have been objected to me in this city concerned
only myself and my own election. These charges, I think, are four in
number: my neglect of a due attention to my constituents, the not paying
more frequent visits here; my conduct on the affairs of the first Irish
Trade Acts; my opinion and mode of proceeding on Lord Beauchamp's
Debtors' Bills; and my votes on the late affairs of the Roman Catholics.
All of these (except perhaps the first) relate to matters of very
considerable public concern; and it is not lest you should censure me
improperly, but lest you should form improper opinions on matters of
some moment to you, that I trouble you at all upon the subject. My
conduct is of small importance.

With regard to the first charge, my friends have spoken to ms of it in
the style of amicable expostulation,--not so much blaming the thing as
lamenting the effects. Others, less partial to me, were less kind in
assigning the motives. I admit, there is a decorum and propriety in a
member of Parliament's paying a respectful court to his constituents. If
I were conscious to myself that pleasure, or dissipation, or low,
unworthy occupations had detained me from personal attendance on you, I
would readily admit my fault, and quietly submit to the penalty. But,
Gentlemen, I live at an hundred miles' distance from Bristol; and at the
end of a session I come to my own house, fatigued in body and in mind,
to a little repose, and to a very little attention to my family and my
private concerns. A visit to Bristol is always a sort of canvass, else
it will do more harm than good. To pass from the toils of a session to
the toils of a canvass is the furthest thing in the world from repose. I
could hardly serve you _as I have done_, and court you too. Most of you
have heard that I do not very remarkably spare myself in _public_
business; and in the _private_ business of my constituents I have done