‘My dear Sir,—I came hither on Friday and shall go home next Saturday. I hear there are three pamphlets lately published that command much attention—Lord Sheffield’s,[199] Sir Thomas Sturton’s, and “Candid Enquiries,” etc. When does your Board intend to enter the lists? The Duke says it has shown him great politeness by the attention it has paid to a proposal of his. If you have not got “Islington on Forestalling,” &c. you should buy it, for several statutes, absurd as they are, you will find set forth clearly and methodically—I should not properly say clearly (but this is no fault of the editor), for we do not know what statutes may be said to be declaratory of the common law, or not. Did you not rejoice with me that Sheridan animadverted on those judges who had thundered their anathemas against forestallers, &c.? I am persuaded that some of the riots owed their origin to the intemperate language so extra-judicially used. I was sorry to see the turn which affairs took upon the Report of the Committee. Had Pitt been silent about the Jacobins, and had your friend Wilberforce abstained from abusing Grey’s connections and Sir Francis Burdett’s speech, there would probably have been a great unanimity. The more Wilberforce endeavoured to exculpate himself, the deeper he seemed to plunge. He was well advised by Sir F. B., who seldom harangues with any propriety, “to think more, and speak less.” ‘When I mentioned agricultural books I ought not to have appeared insensible to the pleasure I received from perusing the greater part of Burke’s pamphlet, very lately published by Dr. Lawrence. You, I find, make there a distinguished figure in the foreground. Do you approve of what Burke says about the distilleries? ‘A few minutes before I came hither on Friday a very melancholy event took place. Winterton, the Groom of the Chambers, had been seen walking by the side of the river near the mill, not far from the house, and was never heard of afterwards till his body was found in the river. The Coroner is expected to-day, and he will probably instruct the jury to bring in their verdict, “lunacy,” as some of the servants had observed in him marks of insanity a few days preceding. ‘If you can spare five minutes from the service you pay to the Board and to the public, favour me with a few lines. You live now more with politicians than with farmers. ‘What will be the result of our breaking with the Emperor of Russia, whose conduct Mr. Pitt truly calls "strange versatility and caprice"? ‘Tell me a good deal, for the Duke has no regular correspondent in Town now that Stonehewer is here. ‘I was with you at Bradfield when Buonaparte’s first offers for a peace were published. ‘You said you thought the Ministry would pay attention to them, and do you think that, upon the whole, we can make as good a peace as them, the French having been almost driven out of Italy?