talent will secure the success of a newspaper _without ministerial patronage_," and that from "the _commencement of the Addington administration_" whatever he himself had written "in _The Morning Post_ or _Courier_ was in defence of Government." In the preceding paragraph he argues that neither Mr. Percival nor "the present administration" pursued the plans of Mr. Pitt. In what degree my Father's writings contributed to the reputation and success of _The Morning Post_ cannot at this distance of time be _precisely_ settled. It must indeed be difficult to say what occasions success in such enterprises, if Mr. Stuart's own brother could attribute that of _The Morning Post_ to Sir James Mackintosh, "though with less reason even than if he had ascribed it to Coleridge." The long story told to show that booksellers were not aware of Mr. C.'s having produced any effect on the paper, and when they set up a rival journal, never cared to obtain his services, but eagerly secured those of Mr. Stuart's assistant, George Lane, does not quite decide the question; for booksellers, though, as Mr. Stuart says, "knowing men" in such matters, are not _omniscient_ even in what concerns their own business. If the anti-gallican policy of _The Morning Post_ "increased its circulation," I cannot but think that the influence of my Father's writings,[38] though not numerous, and indirectly of his intercourse with the Editor,--who rates his conversational powers as highly as it is usual to rate them--in directing the tone and determining the principles of the paper, must have served it materially. I believe him to have been the anti-gallican _spirit_ that governed _The Morning Post_, though he may not have performed as much of the _letter_ as he fancied. I shall conclude this subject with quoting part of a letter of my Father's on the subject of _The Courier_, to which Mr. Stuart, to whom it was addressed, declares himself to have replied, that "as long as he actively interfered, the Paper was conducted on the independent principles alluded to by Coleridge," but that, for reasons which he states, he found it best, from the year 1811, to "leave Street entirely to his own course;" and "so it gradually slid into a mere ministerial journal--an instrument of the Treasury:" "acquired a high character for being the organ of Government, and obtained a great circulation; but became odious to the mob--excited by the falsehoods of the weekly journals." LETTER 151. TO STUART[39] Wednesday, 8th May, 1816. James Gillman's, Esq., Surgeon, Highgate. My dear Stuart,