ect
to suffer. You have, indeed, begun to complain too soon; and I hope I
am the only confidant of your discontent. Your friends have not yet had
leisure to gratify personal kindness; they have hitherto been busy in
strengthening their ministerial interest[777]. If a vacancy happens in
Scotland, give them early intelligence; and as you can serve Government
as powerfully as any of your probable competitors, you may make in some
sort a warrantable claim.

'Of the exaltations and depressions of your mind you delight to talk,
and I hate to hear. Drive all such fancies from you.

'On the day when I received your letter, I think, the foregoing page was
written; to which, one disease or another has hindered me from making
any additions. I am now a little better. But sickness and solitude press
me very heavily. I could bear sickness better, if I were relieved from
solitude[778].

'The present dreadful confusion of the publick[779] ought to make you
wrap yourself up in your hereditary possessions, which, though less than
you may wish, are more than you can want; and in an hour of religious
retirement return thanks to GOD, who has exempted you from any strong
temptation to faction, treachery, plunder[780], and disloyalty.

'As your neighbours distinguish you by such honours as they can bestow,
content yourself with your station, without neglecting your profession.
Your estate and the Courts will find you full employment; and your mind,
well occupied, will be quiet.

'The usurpation of the nobility, for they apparently usurp all the
influence they gain by fraud and misrepresentation, I think it certainly
lawful, perhaps your duty, to resist. What is not their own they have
only by robbery.

'Your question about the horses gives me more perplexity. I know not
well what advice to give you. I can only recommend a rule which you do
not want;--give as little pain as you can. I suppose that we have a
right to their service while their strength lasts; what we can do with
them afterwards I cannot so easily determine. But let us consider.
Nobody denies that man has a right first to milk the cow, and to sheer
the sheep, and then to kill them for his table. May he not, by parity of
reason, first work a horse, and then kill him the easiest way, that he
may have the means of another horse, or food for cows and sheep? Man is
influenced in both cases by different motives of self-interest. He that
rejects the one must reject the other.