is no ground for doubting which side of the alternative stated by your Lordship, ought to be taken on the construction of the generality of the words; formed thus general, I am convinced, to secure unanimity in granting the power to treat, without the least secret wish thereby to frustrate national justice and public prosperity.

Your Lordship does me justice in supposing me equally anxious with yourself to see this delicate and important matter brought to an adequate, as well as amicable and happy issue. Perhaps I may have thought, more than others of sounder judgment than mine, that the only way of making the issue adequate was to make it amicable; which, if it has been an error, it was an honest one, proceeding from a sincere, though it should be thought an extreme, sense of the endless difficulties accompanying every idea of substituting the public in the place of the Company, in the collecting, investing, and remitting the revenue; and from a fear, that the knowledge of this impracticability might embolden a body of heated proprietors to stand the issue of such a measure, rather than submit to what they might deem severity in the manner, or in the plan.

I am to beg your Lordship's pardon for this interruption. Truly anxious to leave no doubt upon your mind, which I feel myself authorised to remove by the representation of any circumstances within my knowledge, I could not resist the pleasure of assuring you more fully of the actual

result of the last general court, and the declaration of the directors themselves.

I am, my Lord, with the greatest solicitude for your Lordship's health, and the success of whatever interests you in the accomplishment of your great plans for the prosperity and honour of these kingdoms, my dear Lord,

Your Lordship's most obliged, most faithful servant,

C. TOWNSHEnd.

THE EARL OF CHATHAM TO THE RIGHT HON
CHARLES TOWNSHEND.

DEAR SIR,

Bath, January 6, 1767.

I AM honoured this morning by the favour of your letter of the 4th, and am sorry that any observations of my former letter should have occasioned to you the trouble of justifying the motion of the general court, the wording of which I admitted to be prudent enough; my anxious doubts and well-grounded fears turning upon the final issue of the transaction, not upon the expression of the resolution, which will, in my sense of things, be such, in either alternative, an adequate or an illusory proposal.

It would be an useless intrusion upon your time to repeat here the first principle which rules me in this matter; namely, that the right is evidently

with the Company; for I can venture upon no method of defining the idea of adequate, but by assuming or deciding the question of right, and by considering, consequently, whatever portion of the revenue shall be left by parliament to the Company as indulgence and matter of discretion. I will only add upon this head, that my fears do not arise from distrust of the good intentions of the directors, but from the vices and passions of the general court, to whom they are to report. Under these circumstances, I confess I am not sanguine enough to hope for an issue I shall think adequate.

Allow me now, dear Sir, to assure you, that I esteem myself sensibly obliged to you for the honour of the letter I am now answering, and am not a little flattered with the attention you are so good to give to solicitudes, which are very real, and proportioned to the mighty national benefit, which is to be acquired or lost at the end of this momentous business. I feel all the extent of the favourable and kind expressions with which you conclude your letter, and beg you will accept of my warm acknowledgments. I hope to have the pleasure of embracing you in town about the 14th or 15th.

very

I am, with great regard and consideration, dear Sir,

Your most faithful and

most obedient humble servant, CHATHAM.

JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. TO THE EARL OF CHATHAM.

MY LORD,

Edinburgh, January 3, 1767.

I HAVE received a letter from General Paoli, in which he thus talks of Mr. Pitt:-"La pubblica fama esalta fino alle stelle i talenti del Signor Pitt; ma la relazione che ella mi fa della conversazione avuta con esso lui, mi riempie ancora di maggior ammirazione e di attaccamento per la bonta del cuore di questo Pericle della Gran Bretagna."

My Lord, I wrote to General Paoli the many strong and noble expressions which you uttered in a private conference to me, with as much eloquence as ever Mr. Pitt displayed in the fullest assembly; and, my Lord, I trust you will now show a generous sincerity. I would recommend to your Lordship Mr.Dick, his Majesty's consul at Leghorn, as a gentleman of great information and judgment, as to every thing that concerns the Mediterranean; and I would recommend him as a man of worth and spirit, who is warmly attached to the brave Corsicans. He will give your Lordship all the light you can desire, as to the advantages which Great Britain might derive from an alliance with Corsica, either in the way of trade or for the conveniency of war, and will faithfully execute whatever commands your Lordship may lay upon him.

Your Lordship knows that a proclamation stands

in force, by which the subjects of Great Britain are prohibited from holding any intercourse with the malecontents of Corsica. If your Lordship would only get us that proclamation annulled, it would be of great consequence. In the mean time, Corsica seems to be particularly unlucky. The Swiss and the Dutch had powerful assistance in recovering their liberties; but the gallant islanders for whom I am concerned have now been in arms for the glorious cause nine and thirty years, and not a state in Europe has interposed in their behalf.

Let me plead with your Lordship for Corsica. Let me put you in mind of the people animated with the spirit of liberty, whom the Romans stood forth and protected against the great King of Asia, and in so doing gained more real honour than by the most extensive conquests; and let me recall to your Lordship the excellent old fable of the lion and the mouse. Far be it from me to attempt pointing out any measures to be taken by the government of my country; but surely a great free nation may befriend a small one. Is Great Britain now afraid of France; or does she owe any thing to Genoa? As an advocate for Corsica, I look up to the Earl of Chatham, and I cannot but hope for a favourable return. (')

(1) In a letter written a few days before to Mr. Boswell, Dr. Johnson gives him this sensible advice: "You have somehow or other warmed your imagination. I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession. Mind your