what Lord Rockingham has done, with that and
with his own shattered constitution, for these last twelve years, I
confess I am rather surprised that he has done so much and persevered so
long, than that he has felt now and then some cold fits, and that he
grows somewhat languid and desponding at last. I know that he, and those
who are much prevalent with him, though they are not thought so much
devoted to popularity as others, do very much look to the people, and
more than I think is wise in them, who do so little to guide and direct
the public opinion. Without this they act, indeed; but they act as it
were from compulsion, and because it is impossible, in their situation,
to avoid taking some part. All this it is impossible to change, and to
no purpose to complain of.

As to that popular humor which is the medium we float in, if I can
discern anything at all of its present state, it is far worse than I
have ever known or could ever imagine it. The faults of the people are
not popular vices; at least, they are not such as grow out of what we
used to take to be the English temper and character. The greatest number
have a sort of an heavy, lumpish acquiescence in government, without
much respect or esteem for those that compose it. I really cannot avoid
making some very unpleasant prognostics from this disposition of the
people. I think that many of the symptoms must have struck you: I will
mention one or two that are to me very remarkable. You must know that at
Bristol we grow, as an election interest, and even as a party interest,
rather stronger than we were when I was chosen. We have just now a
majority in the corporation. In this state of matters, what, think you,
have they done? They have voted their freedom to Lord Sandwich and Lord
Suffolk!--to the first, at the very moment when the American privateers
were domineering in the Irish Sea, and taking the Bristol traders in the
Bristol Channel;--to the latter, when his remonstrances on the subject
of captures were the jest of Paris and of Europe. This fine step was
taken, it seems, in honor of the zeal of these two profound statesmen in
the prosecution of John the Painter: so totally negligent are they of
everything essential, and so long and so deeply affected with trash the
most low and contemptible; just as if they thought the merit of Sir John
Fielding was the most shining point in the character of great
ministers, in the most critical of all times, and, of all oth