“How I can have delayed so long to thank you for your
last kind letter, appears to me perfectly unaccountable. It is natural in
sickness to reflect on our sins, and in the course of a ten days’
confinement, I vowed to St. Cosmus and St.
Damienus, that as soon as I was able to hold a pen I would
employ it in writing to you, and telling you how much I was gratified in
finding that the observations
I had ventured to publish on Lord
Grey’s speech coincided so nearly with your own
sentiments. This vow I now perform, and assure you most sincerely, that nothing
could have been more gratifying to me than to find my statements approved by
one who can look with an impartial eye, not only on the politics and parties of
one country, but on the relative situation, conduct, and pretensions of all. It
is to such critics alone that I confess I should wish to appeal; but, as they
are of rare occurrence, I must not be surprised that this last effort should
share the fate of all the rest of the same nature, and should be equally
disregarded by those who are in and those who are out of office; by the friends
of corruption and the friends of reform; all of whom labour on in their
purblind occupations with as obstinate a blindness to all general views, as if
they had no more
| 494 | LIFE OF WILLIAM ROSCOE. |
