“Only the day before yesterday, I was bent upon going to town for the 23rd, and had written to Mr. H---- of Fontington, to meet me there about the farm. But now I find that it cannot be, without an inconvenience and risk which, I am sure, no friend would wish me to incur, especially as my journey would produce little more than my own gratification at witnessing the assemblage of so many public-spirited men. You know very well that this is my harvest, and that this year I have a tenfold harvest. I allude to the oak-tree cutting, which must be done while the sap is in the flood of its spring, or not at all; and the bark, you will observe, is of the little thinners that I am cutting upon my own account, worth three times as much as the timber. In the average of years, this sap season lasts a good month; but the very extraordinary backwardness of this spring, and the very rare hot weather that has come on after it, has made the season last only three weeks, a fortnight of which has already passed. Owing to this, I, who waited till the several companies of fellers had finished the great timber, am obliged to fall to work on Saturday, instead of waiting till next Tuesday. I am compelled to set sixty men on at once, and as mine is a work of thinning, it will require my constant attendance from the time the men begin till they leave off. I must be with them to mark the trees; to see the effect of taking out some, before we take out others; and, in short, the health and growth, as well as the future beauty, of 100 acres of the finest woods in England depend upon my personal attendance between Saturday and Wednesday next. Nothing ever was more pointedly perverse; but I trust that all those who wished me to attend the dinner will be convinced that I ought not to leave home at this time. “I am of opinion, too (and I should like to hear what the Major says of the matter), that I am of most weight as a _spectator_ and _comment-maker_. This way my word and opinion pass for a good deal; but I am not clear that whatever good I could do as an _agitator_, would not be more than counterbalanced by the loss of weight in the other character. I know it is the opinion of Sir Francis, that to put me in parliament would be to lessen my weight; and, really, I think that the same reasoning will apply to the other case. In fact, we cannot _act_ and _write_ too, with so much advantage. The way in which I am most able to aid the cause of the country is to sit quietly here, and give my sincere and unbiased opinions upon all that passes which appears worthy of particular notice.