Speaking on public affairs he said that he never looked at a newspaper; ‘but if anything happens to occur which they think will please me, I am told of it.’ I observed there was strength of mind in this resolution. ‘Oh, no!’ he replied, ‘it is mere weakness of mind.’ It appeared evident that he would not publish upon the subject which brought me to Gregory’s; but he declared himself to be absolutely inimical to any regulation whatever by law; that all such interference was not only unnecessary but would be mischievous. He observed that the supposed scarcity was extremely ill understood, and that the consumption of the people was a clear proof of it; this, in his neighbourhood, was not lessened in the material articles of bread, meat, and beer, which he learnt by a very careful examination of many bakers, butchers, and excisemen; nor had the poor been distressed further than what resulted immediately from that improvidence which was occasioned by the Poor-laws. Mr. Burke had not read Lord Sheffield’s Memoirs of Gibbon. On my observing that Mr. Gibbon declares himself of the same opinion with him on the French Revolution, he said that Gibbon was an old friend of his, and he knew well that before he (Mr. G.) died, that he heartily repented of the anti-religious part of his work for contributing to free mankind from all restraint on their vices and profligacy, and thereby aiding so much the spirit which produced the horrors that blackened the most detestable of all revolutions. Upon my mentioning Monsieur de Mounier and Lally Tollendal, he exclaimed, ‘_I wish they were both hanged!_’ He seemed to bear hard upon the Duke de Liancourt, and to allude indistinctly to some report of my having opened an hospitable door to that nobleman, and having received a bad return. I defended the duke, and had not the conversation been interrupted I should have discovered what he meant by the remark. The same observation has met my ear on other occasions, but was never explained. Mrs. Crewe arrived just before dinner, and though she exerted herself with that brilliancy of imagination which renders her conversation so interesting, it was not sufficient to raise the drooping spirits of Mr. Burke; it hurt me to see the languid manner in which he lounged rather than sat at table, his dress entirely neglected, and his manner quite dejected; yet he tried once or twice to rally, and once even to pun. Mrs. Crewe, observing that Thelwel was to stand for Norwich, said it would be horrid for Mr. Wyndham to be turned out by such a man. ‘Aye,’ he replied, ‘that would not _tell well_.’ She laughed at him in the style of condemning a bad pun. Somebody said it was a fair one, he said _it was neither very bad nor good_.