happened at Ranelagh, in which the footmen mobbed and ill-treated some gentlemen who had been active in that reformation. I was apprehensive lest any personal mischief should happen to the Duke of Bedford, and forbore to spirit up that contest, though I desired so much to make the Ministers both odious and ridiculous. To the first, indeed, their characters were open: but the worse they were, the more difficult it was to make them ridiculous. They were so profligate, that they were the first to laugh and the last to feel. It was more my business, too, to incense the people than to divert them. Our party was more popular than fashionable; and in a very corrupt age fashion is very formidable. Nor was this all the difficulty: I wished to secure liberty, and to revenge my friend without passing the bounds allowed against public enemies. My friends were timid, or cautious, or over-candid; and I experienced what I have said before, that a country will never be saved by the best men in it. Ours had been rescued by two of the worst--Lord Temple and Wilkes. I had little but my pen to carry on the cause with; and I knew any violence would not be more disrelished by my enemies than by friends. Half our party was likely to desert us; and the other half not likely to support me. When a man is borne up by party, abuse little affects him; but I did not choose to encounter it when I might be left to stand the fire alone. I had seen the fate of Wilkes, abandoned by all he had served; and had no mind to accompany him in his exile. Still, my honour and my pride would not suffer me to sit patient under the insults offered both to Mr. Conway and myself. I determined to vindicate his character and assert my own independence in a manner that should do credit to both; and I succeeded, happily, by observing at once so much firmness and decency, that while I held him up as a perfect character, I secured my own as a faithful and undaunted friend. The opportunity was offered to me by a most shameless and illiberal attack made on him officiously by the agents of the Ministry in a thing called “An Address to the Public on a late Dismission.” This I answered in a Counter-Address.[1] It was replied to by the first author, one Guthrie, in a style at once so gross and tedious, that if any man could have patience to read it, I should desire he would form his idea of that Ministry from that production. The only sentence worth refuting was my being charged with having flattered and been obliged to George Grenville. I, who had never stooped to comply with Lord Holland while connected with him; who had set at defiance the power of the Pelhams; had not bowed to the plenitude of Lord Bute’s power, nor courted even Mr. Pitt when I admired him most in the zenith of credit and victory; was not likely to have bent the knee to the prater Grenville, with whom I had broken almost as soon as he had any power at all. Let that imputation answer itself!--But I was obliged to