TO SIR CHARLES BINGHAM.

A

LETTER

TO

THE HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX,

ON THE AMERICAN WAR.

OCTOBER 8, 1777.

My Dear Charles,--I am, on many accounts, exceedingly pleased with your
journey to Ireland. I do not think it was possible to dispose better of
the interval between this and the meeting of Parliament. I told you as
much, in the same general terms, by the post. My opinion of the
infidelity of that conveyance hindered me from being particular. I now
sit down with malice prepense to kill you with a very long letter, and
must take my chance for some safe method of conveying the dose. Before I
say anything to you of the place you are in, or the business of it, on
which, by the way, a great deal might be said, I will turn myself to the
concluding part of your letter from Chatsworth.

You are sensible that I do not differ from you in many things; and most
certainly I do not dissent from the main of your doctrine concerning the
heresy of depending upon contingencies. You must recollect how uniform
my sentiments have been on that subject. I have ever wished a settled
plan of our own, founded in the very essence of the American business,
wholly unconnected with the events of the war, and framed in such a
manner as to keep up our credit and maintain our system at home, in
spite of anything which may happen abroad. I am now convinced, by a long
and somewhat vexatious experience, that such a plan is absolutely
impracticable. I think with you, that some faults in the constitution
of those whom we must love and trust are among the causes of this
impracticability; they are faults, too, that one can hardly wish them
perfectly cured of, as I am afraid they are intimately connected with
honest, disinterested intentions, plentiful fortunes, assured rank, and
quiet homes. A great deal of activity and enterprise can scarcely ever
be expected from such men, unless some horrible calamity is just over
their heads, or unless they suffer some gross personal insults from
power, the resentment of which may be as unquiet and stimulating a
principle in their minds as ambition is in those of a different
complexion. To say the truth, I cannot greatly blame them. We live at a
time when men are not repaid in fame for what they sacrifice in interest
or repose.

On the whole, when I consider of what discordant, and particularly of
what fleeting materials the opposition has been all along composed, and
at the same time review