"MY DEAR WILBERFORCE,--Upon perusing the French papers I am well satisfied with the conduct of our Government. The tone is firm and uniform, and the demands such that we might have felt extremely happy to have made peace if we could have obtained them. There is somewhat of a blundering about the basis, which you will recollect Lord Malmesbury wrote so much ingenious nonsense about upon a former occasion, and it is to be lamented that Mr. Fox (whose letters upon the whole do him great honour) laid down an indistinct and indefinite basis in general terms of loose construction instead of binding that Proteus, his friend Talleyrand, to whom in his first address he professes the most perfect _attachment_ (what a word from a Minister not born in the days of Charles II.!) to the sense in which he meant to interpret, fairly as I think, his words, and the words of his master. "Nothing can equal the shabbiness, chicanery, and double dealing of the French negotiators, and their proceedings do in fact but little credit to their understandings, if they have any opinion of ours. "Believe me, my dear Wilberforce, "Most sincerely yours, "HENRY BANKES." Lord Harrowby, who twice refused the Premiership, writes of the state of parties in 1809. _Lord Harrowby to Mr. Wilberforce._ _Friday, September 22, 1809._ "DEAR WILBERFORCE,--You must have thought me a great bear not to have thanked you sooner for your kind recollection of my wish to see a sketch of Mrs. H. More's rustic building. It is much more finished than I wished, and shall be sent to Kensington as soon as Mrs. Ryder has taken a slight sketch of it.