‘I love agriculture because it makes good citizens, good husbands, good fathers, good children; because it does not leave a man time to plunder his neighbour, and because by its plenty it bereaves him of the temptation; and I hate an aristocratical Government because it plunders these honest fellows; because it is idle; it is insolent; it values itself on the merits of it, and because, like an overbearing torrent, the farther it is removed from its fountain head, and the less it partakes of its original purity, the more desolation it carries with it; and because, like a stinking, stagnated pool, it inflicts those very disorders which it was the chief merit of its spring and fountain head to heal and remove. ‘Adieu. ‘Ever affectionately, ‘BRISTOL.’ My brother, the Rev. Dr. Young, Fellow of Eton College, in this letter informs me that the King reads my ‘Annals’ and is much pleased with them, and highly approves of my arguments to show that we are far enough from being in a ruined state. ‘Eton College: May 1, 1785. ‘Dear Arthur,—I have two of your letters to answer; the latter directed to Worcester, why, I know not, for I never intended to be there till the beginning of next month. I see no reason for your being at the expense you allude to for the public, and think you ought to be indemnified; you cannot afford these journeys to London, and so I would plainly tell the Ministers. ‘Yesterday se’nnight as I returned from the chase the King spoke to me of you in very handsome terms; I find that he reads your publications. ‘He commended particularly your recent periodical work as being very useful, and was much pleased with your argument to prove that we are not a ruined people, but have great resources. I told him that you had been sent for by Mr. Rose,[97] which he did know. ‘You wrote to me some time ago that you were of the same opinion with Lord Sheffield, but now you write that the commercial part of their measure[98] is very good, but the political part is very bad. How do you reconcile this, for Lord S. is against the commercial part? ‘I wish you would explain this, for I am against both parts, though, I confess, no judge. ‘You ask whether I continue my new trade of hunting. If you think it is a profitable one you are much mistaken; so far indeed it is, that I hope to take this year twenty pounds out of my apothecary’s bill; I have not been for some winters so well as I have been since I took to hunting, and I hope to continue the trade next year. I was yesterday seven hours and a half on horseback, and rode certainly fifty-five miles, besides fifteen more home from Henley in a post-chaise, which is pretty well at fifty-seven years old.