gratitude and humiliation, (I am sure I find the latter most powerfully called forth in my heart by my own survey). Many thanks for your last kind letter. You have precisely anticipated what was said by the several _dramatis personæ_. It is a real sacrifice for Emily and you to be absent from my family circle. But the sacrifice is to duty, and that is enough. And you have no small ground for comfort, from your not having to go through the 'experiment solitary,' as Lord Bacon terms it, but to have one, to whom you may say that solitude is sweet. But I must surrender the pen to your dear mother." The country was at that time extremely disturbed by what were known as the "Swing Riots."[62] Bands of rioters went about, burning ricks and threshing machines, then newly introduced, and considered by the labourers as depriving them of the winter threshing work. Wilberforce seems to have shared this feeling. "HIGHWOOD HILL, "_November 25, 1830._ "Your mother suggests that a threshing machine used to be kept in one of your barns. If so I really think it should be removed. I should be very sorry to have it stated that a threshing machine had been burnt on the premises of the Rev. Samuel Wilberforce; they take away one of the surest sources of occupation for farmers in frost and snow times. In what a dreadful state the country now is! Gisborne, I find, has stated his opinion, that the present is the period of pouring out the 7th Vial, when there was to be general confusion, insubordination, and misery. It really appears in the political world, like what the abolition of some of the great elements in the physical world would be; the extinction, for instance, of the principle of gravity." "_December 9, 1830._ "I have been delaying the books that all might go together. Mather's 'Magnalia'[63] shall be one of them. There is a very curious passage in it early in the volume, in which in Charles I's time, he says, expenses have been increasing so much of late years that men can no longer maintain their rank in society. Assuredly this Government is greatly to be preferred before the last. Brougham better than Copley, and several highly respectable besides, the Grants (Charles is in the Cabinet), Lord Althorp, Sir James Graham, Lord Grey himself, highly respectable as family men; Denman a very honest fellow. The worst appointment is Holland, Duchy of Lancaster; he has much church patronage which, though I love the man, I cannot think decorous. Lord Lansdowne, very decent, Lord Goderich ditto. But your mother is worrying me all this time to force me out, and Joseph declares the letters will be too late. So farewell." "_December 17, 1830._