His father was now dying, and a London trip, which had been planned by Boswell for 1782, found the son at the very limit of his credit. 'If you anticipate your inheritance,' he was reminded, 'you can at last inherit nothing. Poverty (added the old _impransus_ Johnson, out of the depths of his own experience), my friend, is so great an evil that I cannot but earnestly enjoin you to avoid it. Live on what you have; live, if you can, on less.' Lord Auchinleck died suddenly at Edinburgh, on August 30th, 1782; and it was unfortunate for Bozzy that neither at the death of his father nor of his mother, nor, as we shall see of Johnson, was he present. The evening of the old man's days had been, we are assured by Ramsay of Ochtertyre, clouded by the follies and eccentricities of his son. For thirty years he had been sorely tried; twice he had paid his debts, he had indulged him with a foreign tour, had provided him with every means of securing professional success at the bar, only to see that son do everything to miss it and become everything his father hated in life--a Tory, an Anglican, and a Jacobite. The new laird was anxious to display himself on a wider sphere. Johnson was now visibly failing, and was glad of someone to lean upon for little attentions. 'Boswell,' he said, 'I think I am easier with you than with almost anybody. Get as much force of mind as you can. Let your imports be more than your exports, and you'll never go far wrong.' He reverted to the old days of the tour in a hopeful strain: 'I should like to come and have a cottage in your park, toddle about, live mostly on milk, and be taken care of by Mrs Boswell. She and I are good friends now, are we not?' In 1783 Boswell appeared before the public with a _Letter to the People of Scotland_. It was on Fox's proposed bill to regulate the affairs of the East India Company. Against it he stands forth, 'as an ancient and faithful Briton, holding an estate transmitted to him by charters from a series of kings.' Guardedly Johnson admitted that 'your paper contains very considerable knowledge of history and of the constitution: it will certainly raise your character, though perhaps it may not make you a minister of state.' A copy to Pitt elicited the formal acceptance of thanks, but the exclusion of the bill Boswell took as proof of his own advocacy. He stood for Ayrshire, turning back from York when the dissolution was announced. 'Our Boswell,' wrote the doctor to Langton, 'is now said to stand for some place. Whether to wish him success his best friends hesitate.'