nals, where
men have been put to death for no other reason than that they had
obtained favors from the crown. I claim, not the letter, but the spirit
of the old English law,--that is, to be tried by my peers. I decline his
Grace's jurisdiction as a judge. I challenge the Duke of Bedford as a
juror to pass upon the value of my services. Whatever his natural parts
may be, I cannot recognize in his few and idle years the competence to
judge of my long and laborious life. If I can help it, he shall not be
on the inquest of my _quantum meruit_. Poor rich man! he can hardly know
anything of public industry in its exertions, or can estimate its
compensations when its work is done. I have no doubt of his Grace's
readiness in all the calculations of vulgar arithmetic; but I shrewdly
suspect that he is little studied in the theory of moral proportions,
and has never learned the rule of three in the arithmetic of policy and
state.

His Grace thinks I have obtained too much. I answer, that my exertions,
whatever they have been, were such as no hopes of pecuniary reward could
possibly excite; and no pecuniary compensation can possibly reward them.
Between money and such services, if done by abler men than I am, there
is no common principle of comparison: they are quantities
incommensurable. Money is made for the comfort and convenience of animal
life. It cannot be a reward for what mere animal life must, indeed,
sustain, but never can inspire. With submission to his Grace, I have not
had more than sufficient. As to any noble use, I trust I know how to
employ as well as he a much greater fortune than he possesses. In a more
confined application, I certainly stand in need of every kind of relief
and easement much more than he does. When I say I have not received more
than I deserve, is this the language I hold to Majesty? No! Far, very
far, from it! Before that presence I claim no merit at all. Everything
towards me is favor and bounty. One style to a gracious benefactor;
another to a proud and insulting foe.

His Grace is pleased to aggravate my guilt by charging my acceptance of
his Majesty's grant as a departure from my ideas and the spirit of my
conduct with regard to economy. If it be, my ideas of economy wore false
and ill-founded. But they are the Duke of Bedford's ideas of economy I
have contradicted, and not my own. If he means to allude to certain
bills brought in by me on a message from the throne in 1782, I tell him
that