‘Dear Sir,—We have been waiting for your arrival in town _patiently_ for the week past, and I am afraid we must now make up our minds to wait _patiently_ a great deal longer, as the passing of the Wool Bill has not been able to bring you to town. By the word _We_ I mean my brother, our friend the lord of slaves,[130] myself, and I dare say it includes fifty other people whom I have not the honour of knowing. We have been three days past laying our heads together to find out some method of _doing you honour in effigy_ in order to make up to you in some measure the disgrace you have undergone (as is creditably reported about town) of being burnt in effigy by the wool manufacturers at Bury. My brother is for procuring your effigy, and after having crowned it with a wreath composed of turnip roots, cabbage leaves, potato-apples, wheat-ears, oats, straws, &c., and tied with a band of wool, thinks it ought to be placed upon its pedestal (being the volume of Virgil’s “Georgics”) to be worshipped by the real patriots; Mr. Huthhausen thinks a plain ribbon a sufficient honour for a man whose ideas can admit of the belief of slavery in Silesia; and, as for myself, I am of opinion that a man whose life has been devoted without fee or reward to the service of the public has so great a reward arising from the consciousness of having done good, and so just a claim to honour, that I shall not trouble my head about methods to _increase it_. But I must beg your pardon for this lady-like chat, though your having been burnt in effigy is enough to make any pen run wild.... I could wish that a favour I have to beg of you were not inconvenient.’ [The writer requests that some remarks of his own on the book named above may be inserted in the ‘Annals.’] From Edmund Burke, Esq., on an application I made to him relative to the Wool Bill. [_Unfortunately no copy can be found of this letter._] Sir Joseph Banks gives me joy of being burned in effigy at Norwich (Bury?) on account of my opposition to the Wool Bill:— ‘Soho Square: May 13, 1788. ‘Dear Sir,—With this you will receive the “Instructions given to the Council against the Wool Bill.”[131] ‘I have corrected the whole, but I fear you will find it miserably deficient in point of composition, but as I am not ambitious on that head I mean to be satisfied if I am intelligible. ‘I give you joy sincerely at having arrived at the glory of being burned in effigy; nothing is so conclusive a proof of your possessing the best of the argument. No one was ever burned if he was wrong—the business in that case is to expose his blunders—but when argument is precluded firebrands are ready substitutes. ‘Believe me, dear Sir, ‘Yours faithfully, ‘J. BANKS.’