"It has been the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause of every reproach and distress which has attended your government, that you should never have been acquainted with the language of truth until you heard it in the complaints of your people."--Let. 35. "A faultless, insipid equality in his character is neither capable of virtue or vice in the extreme, but it secures his submission to those persons whom he has been accustomed to respect, and makes him a dangerous instrument of their ambition. Secluded from the world, attached from his infancy to one set of persons and one set of ideas, he can neither open his heart to new connections, nor his mind to better information."--Let. 39. "That the crown is this overbearing part in the English constitution, needs not to be mentioned; and that it derives its whole consequence merely from being the giver of _places and pensions_, is self-evident. Wherefore, though we have been wise enough to shut and lock a door against absolute monarchy, we at the same time have been foolish enough to put the crown in possession of the key. "The prejudice of Englishmen in favor of their own government by king, lords, and commons, arises as much or more from national pride than reason. Individuals are undoubtedly safer in England than in some other countries, but the will of the king is as much the law of the land in Britain as in France, with this difference: that, instead of proceeding directly from his mouth, it is handed to the people under the formidable shape of an act of parliament. For the fate of Charles the First hath only made kings more subtle--not more just." Of the king's influence on parliament, he says: "It is arbitrary and notoriously under the influence of the crown."--Let. 44. "I beg you will convey to your gracious master my humble congratulations upon the glorious success of _peerages and pensions_, so lavishly distributed as the rewards of Irish virtue."--Let. 66.