‘Dr. Hardy and Sir Henry Moncrief (a Scotch clergyman) are come to solicit a Bill for the enlarging of the stipends of the Scotch clergy. They do not apprehend much difficulty in carrying it through the Houses, though the addition must be supplied out of the tithes in the hands of lay proprietors. Hardy is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Edinburgh—a most sensible man, with great liberality of mind. Sir Henry is a polished man, and likewise a man of business. I hope to see them both at St. Edmund’s Hill, and you must meet them. You should get Hardy’s pamphlet, the “Patriot,” published in Scotland on the present emergency; there are in it many excellent things. ‘You seem in your letter to be still apprehensive of some plots and insurrections. ‘Plot! Plots! was the catch-word in King Charles II.’s time. Sir H. Moncrief and Dr. Hardy laughed at Dundas’s account of the political riots in Scotland. They absolutely denied the existence of them—considered them as political; and when you read Hardy’s pamphlet, you will see that he would not have failed setting them forth if they had deserved any consideration. ‘Adieu! I should not have come to London had it not been on account of my ecclesiastical foundling. ‘JOHN SYMONDS.’ _From Dr. Symonds_ ‘September 1, 1793. ‘My dear Sir,—I do not wonder that you smiled at the affected secrecy of Macpherson concerning the Censomento. The book to which he alludes cannot be the “Bilancio dello stato,” &c., which was written to please Count Firmian. I knew well the gentleman who wrote it and gave it to me, as I often met him at dinner at the count’s. ‘Sometimes he was too decisive. One day he said at the count’s table that the Bresciano contained 800,000 inhabitants now. As Count F. knew that I had just come from Brescia, and had not lost my time there, he asked me what number there was; on which I told him that there were 376,000 according to a census taken a few years before. The count smiled, and looked very attentively on Carpani (for that was the author’s name), who never liked me so well after that day, nor had Count Firmian so high an opinion of him. You possibly may not know the history of Sir John Macpherson. He offered the Duke of Grafton, when he was at the head of the Treasury, a vast collection of jewels, by order of the Nabob of Arcot, which the duke absolutely refused, and Bradshaw, his secretary, also. Sir John, thinking that the nabob would not believe that he had offered the present, published for his own vindication the answers of the duke and Bradshaw, for which he was turned out of the company’s service, as he was pursuing an interest then opposite to its interests.