The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund BurkePurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A LETTER WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ., OCCASIONED BY THE ACCOUNT GIVEN IN A NEWSPAPER OF THE SPEECH MADE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS BY THE OF IN THE DEBATE CONCERNING LOED FITZWILLIAM. '795- LETTER. Beacoxsfif.ld, May 26, 1795. IY DEAR SIR, ?I have been told of the vol- -LA untary which, for the entertainment of the House of Lords, has been lately played by his Grace the of ? a great deal at my expense, and a little at his own. I confess I should have liked the composition rather better, if it had been quite new. But every man has his taste, and his Grace is an admirer of ancient music. There may be sometimes too much even of a good thing. A toast is good, and a bumper is not bad: but the best toasts may be so often repeated as to disgust the palate, and ceaseless rounds of bumpers may nauseate and overload the stomach. The ears of the most steady-voting politicians may at last be stunned with three times three. I am sure I have been very grateful for the flattering remembrance made of me in the toasts of the Revolution Society, and of other clubs formed on the same laudable plan. After giving the brimming honors to Citizen Thomas Paine and to Citizen Dr. Priestley, the gentlemen of these clubs seldom failed to bring me forth in my turn, and to drink, Mr. Burke, and thanks to him for the discussion he has provoked. I found myself elevated with this honor; for, even by the collision of resistance, to be the means ofstriking out sparkles of truth, if not merit, is at least felicity. Here I might have rested. But when I found that the great advocate, Mr. Erskine, condescended to resort to these bumper toasts, as the pure and exuberant fountains of politics and of rhetoric, (as I hear he did, in three or four speeches made in defence of certain ... |