has one. I never showed it, as they know, to any one of the ministry. If
the Duke has really a copy, I believe his and mine are the only ones
that exist, except what was taken by fraud from loose and incorrect
papers by S----, to whom I gave the letter to copy. As soon as I began
to suspect him capable of any such scandalous breach of trust, you know
with what anxiety I got the loose papers out of his hands, not having
reason to think that he kept any other. Neither do I believe in fact
(unless he meditated this villany long ago) that he did or does now
possess any clean copy. I never communicated that paper to any one out
of the very small circle of those private friends from whom I concealed
nothing.

"But I beg you and my friends to be cautious how you let it be
understood that I disclaim anything but the mere act and intention of
publication. I do not retract any one of the sentiments contained in
that memorial, which was and is my justification, addressed to the
friends for whose use alone I intended it. Had I designed it for the
public, I should have been more exact and full. It was written in a tone
of indignation, in consequence of the resolutions of the Whig Club,
which were directly pointed against myself and others, and occasioned
our secession from that club; which is the last act of my life that I
shall under any circumstances repent. Many temperaments and explanations
there would have been, if I had ever had a notion that it should meet
the public eye."


In the mean time a large impression, amounting, it is believed, to three
thousand copies, had been dispersed over the country. To recall these
was impossible; to have expected that any acknowledged production of Mr.
Burke, full of matter likely to interest the future historian, could