‘Your letter, or rather your profession of faith, is one of the worst political creeds I remember to have read; you see no merit but beneath a diadem. In government a professed aristocrat, in political economy a monopolist, who commends manufactures, not as a market for the farmer, but for the much nobler purpose of contributing to adorn your _outside_; and who can attain not one better idea of the immortal plough than that of giving some sustenance to your _inside_. But, by the way, is not that inside of yours an equivoque? Do you mean your real or your metaphorical inside, your ribs or your feelings? If you allude to your brains, they are by your own account a _wool_-gathering. Do you mean your heart, and that the philosophical contemplation of so pure an engine as the plough is the sustenance of your best emotions? How will that agree with the panegyrist of a court and the satirist of a farm? Or is it that this inside of yours is a mere bread and cheese cupboard, which, certes, the plough can furnish? Or is it a magic lanthorn full of gay delusions, lighted by tallow from the belly of a sheep? Till you have settled these doubts, I know not which you prefer, manufactures for improving your complection, or agriculture for farming your heart. Nor must you wonder at such questions arising while you use terms that leave one in doubt whether you mean your head or your tail. I know something of the one; the other is a metaphor. Though there is high treason against the plough in almost every line of your letter, yet the words _If I can I will_ are not in the spirit that contains the Eleusinian mysteries; they bring balm to my wounded feelings.’ ----- Footnote 139: These letters were sold by Sotheby, Wilkinson & Co., London, December 1896. Footnote 140: Louis d’or at this time worth 24 francs.—_Littré._ Footnote 141: The well-known Colonel George Hanger, afterwards fourth Lord Coleraine. ‘He served in the Army during the American War, and was afterwards a distinguished character in high society. Wrote his _Life, Adventures, and Opinions_.’—_Annual Register_, 1824. Footnote 142: See on this subject Gibbon’s _Rome_, vol. xi. ch. lxi. Footnote 143: Th. Ruggles, author of a _History of the Poor_, reprinted afterwards from the _Annals of Agriculture_. Many passages were omitted, in accordance with the wishes of Pitt.—_Lowndes._ Footnote 144: Dr. Burney’s daughter, Madame d’Arblay. Footnote 145: Arthur Young’s daughter Elizabeth, the first wife of Rev. Samuel Hoole. Footnote 146: Th. Mace, author of _Music’s Monument_. Footnote 147: T. Playford, author of _Music’s Delight, &c._, 1668, 1676. Footnote 148: C. Simpson, author of _The Division Viol_, 1687. Footnote 149: See the _Travels in France_, Bohn’s Library, p. 335 _et seq._, for the views therein set forth. Footnote 150: