llic tincture of the
spring. It is little to be doubted that several of his forefathers in
that long series have degenerated into honor and virtue. Let the Duke of
Bedford (I am sure he will) reject with scorn and horror the counsels of
the lecturers, those wicked panders to avarice and ambition, who would
tempt him, in the troubles of his country, to seek another enormous
fortune from the forfeitures of another nobility and the plunder of
another Church. Let him (and I trust that yet he will) employ all the
energy of his youth and all the resources of his wealth to crush
rebellious principles which have no foundation in morals, and rebellious
movements that have no provocation in tyranny.

Then will be forgot the rebellions which, by a doubtful priority in
crime, his ancestor had provoked and extinguished. On such a conduct in
the noble Duke, many of his countrymen might, and with some excuse
might, give way to the enthusiasm of their gratitude, and, in the
dashing style of some of the old declaimers, cry out, that, if the Fates
had found no other way in which they could give a[18] Duke of Bedford
and his opulence as props to a tottering world, then the butchery of
the Duke of Buckingham might be tolerated; it might be regarded even
with complacency, whilst in the heir of confiscation they saw the
sympathizing comforter of the martyrs who suffer under the cruel
confiscation of this day, whilst they beheld with admiration his zealous
protection of the virtuous and loyal nobility of France, and his manly
support of his brethren, the yet standing nobility and gentry of his
native land. Then his Grace's merit would be pure and new and sharp, as
fresh from the mint of honor. As he pleased, he might reflect honor on
his predecessors, or throw it forward on those who were to succeed him.
He might be the propagator of the stock of honor, or the root of it, as
he thought proper.

Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should
have been, according to my mediocrity and the mediocrity of the age I
live in, a sort of founder of a family: I should have left a son, who,
in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in
erudition, in genius, in taste, in honor, in generosity, in humanity, in
every liberal sentiment and every liberal accomplishment, would not have
shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom
he traces in his line. His Grace very soon would have wa