To speak seriously,--let me assure you, my dear Sir, that, though I am not permitted to rejoice at _all_ its effects, there is not one man on your side of the water more pleased to see the situation of Ireland so prosperous as that she can afford to throw away her friends. She has obtained, solely by her own efforts, the fruits of a great victory, which I am very ready to allow that the best efforts of her best well-wishers here could not have done for her so effectually in a great number of years, and perhaps could not have done at all. I could wish, however, merely for the sake of her own dignity, that, in turning her poor relations and antiquated friends out of doors, (though one of the most common effects of new prosperity,) she had thought proper to dismiss us with fewer tokens of unkindness. It is true that there is no sort of danger in affronting men who are not of importance enough to have any trust of ministerial, of royal, or of national honor to surrender. The unforced and unbought services of humble men, who have no medium of influence in great assemblies, but through the precarious force of reason, must be looked upon with contempt by those who by their wisdom and spirit have improved the critical moment of their fortune, and have debated with authority against pusillanimous dissent and ungracious compliance, at the head of forty thousand men. Such feeble auxiliaries (as I talk of) to such a force, employed against such resistance, I must own, in the present moment, very little worthy of your attention. Yet, if one were to look forward, it scarcely seems altogether politic to bestow so much liberality of invective on the Whigs of this kingdom as I find has been the fashion to do both in and out of Parliament. That you should pay compliments, in some tone or other, whether ironical or serious, to the minister from whose imbecility you have extorted what you could never obtain from his bounty, is not unnatural. In the first effusions of Parliamentary gratitude to that minister for the early and voluntary benefits he has conferred upon Ireland, it might appear that you were wanting to the triumph of his surrender, if you did not lead some of his enemies captive before him. Neither could you feast him with decorum, if his particular taste were not consulted. A minister, who has never defended his measures in any other way than by railing at his adversaries, cannot have his palate made all at once to the relish of positive commendation. I cannot deny but that on this occasion there was displayed a great deal of the good-breeding which consists in the accommodation of the entertainment to the relish of the guest.