more they had, I should
have been but pleased the more. They were men of talents; they were men
of service. I put the profession of the law out of the question in one
of them. It is a service that rewards itself. But their _public
service_, though from their abilities unquestionably of more value than
mine, in its quantity and in its duration was not to be mentioned with
it. But I never could drive a hard bargain in my life, concerning any
matter whatever; and least of all do I know how to haggle and huckster
with merit. Pension for myself I obtained none; nor did I solicit any.
Yet I was loaded with hatred for everything that was withheld, and with
obloquy for everything that was given. I was thus left to support the
grants of a name ever dear to me and ever venerable to the world in
favor of those who were no friends of mine or of his, against the rude
attacks of those who were at that time friends to the grantees and their
own zealous partisans. I have never heard the Earl of Lauderdale
complain of these pensions. He finds nothing wrong till he comes to me.
This is impartiality, in the true, modern, revolutionary style.

Whatever I did at that time, so far as it regarded order and economy, is
stable and eternal, as all principles must be. A particular order of
things may be altered: order itself cannot lose its value. As to other
particulars, they are variable by time and by circumstances. Laws of
regulation are not fundamental laws. The public exigencies are the
masters of all such laws. They rule the laws, and are not to be ruled by
them. They who exercise the legislative power at the time must judge.

It may be new to his Grace, but I beg leave to tell him that mere
parsimony is not economy. It is separable in theory from it; and in fact
it may or it may not be a _part_ of economy, according to circumstances.
Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If
parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue,
there is, however, another and an higher economy. Economy is a
distributive virtue, and consists, not in saving, but in selection.
Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination,
no comparison, no judgment. Mere instinct, and that not an instinct of
the noblest kind, may produce this false economy in perfection. The
other economy has larger views. It demands a discriminating judgment,
and a firm, sagacious mind. It shuts one door to impudent impo