I
can, and at worst, you need only give it among your tenants.

I am very sensible how ill your lordship is like to be entertained with
the pedantry of a drapier in the terms of his own trade. How will the
matter be mended, when you find me entering again, though very
sparingly, into an affair of state; for such is now grown the
controversy with Mr. Wood, if some great lawyers are to be credited. And
as it often happens at play, that men begin with farthings, and go on to
gold, till some of them lose their estates, and die in jail; so it may
possibly fall out in my case, that by playing too long with Mr. Wood's
halfpence, I may be drawn in to pay a fine, double to the reward for
betraying me, be sent to prison, and "not be delivered thence till I
shall have paid the uttermost farthing."

There are my lord, three sorts of persons with whom I am resolved never
to dispute: A highwayman with a pistol at my breast, a troop of dragoons
who come to plunder my house, and a man of the law who can make a merit
of accusing me. In each of these cases, which are almost the same, the
best method is to keep out of the way, and the next best is to deliver
your money, surrender your house, and confess nothing.

I am told that the two points in my last letter, from which an occasion
of offence hath been taken, are where I mention His Majesty's answer to
the address of the House of Lords upon Mr. Wood's patent, and where I
discourse upon Ireland's being a dependent kingdom. As to the former, I
can only say, that I have treated it with the utmost respect and
caution, and I thought it necessary to shew where Wood's patent differed
in many essential parts from all others that ever had been granted,
because the contrary had for want of due information been so strongly
and so largely asserted. As to the other, of Ireland's dependency, I
confess to have often heard it mentioned, but was never able to
understand what it meant. This gave me the curiosity to enquire among
several eminent lawyers, who professed they knew nothing of the matter.
I then turned over all the statutes of both kingdoms without the least
information, further than an Irish act, that I quoted, of the 33d of
Henry 8th, uniting Ireland to England under one king. I cannot say I was
sorry to be disappointed in my search, because it is certain, I could be
contented to depend only upon God and my prince and the laws of my own
country, after the manner of other nations. But sinc