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_Letter from the Right Honorable Edmund Burke to Lord Auckland_.

My dear Lord,--

I am perfectly sensible of the very flattering honor you have done me in
turning any part of your attention towards a dejected old man, buried
in the anticipated grave of a feeble old age, forgetting and forgotten
in an obscure and melancholy retreat.

In this retreat I have nothing relative to this world to do, but to
study all the tranquillity that in the state of my mind I am capable of.
To that end I find it but too necessary to call to my aid an oblivion of
most of the circumstances, pleasant and unpleasant, of my life,--to
think as little and indeed to know as little as I can of everything that
is doing about me,--and, above all, to divert my mind from all
presagings and prognostications of what I must (if I let my speculations
loose) consider as of absolute necessity to happen after my death, and
possibly even before it. Your address to the public, which you have been
so good as to send to me, obliges me to break in upon that plan, and to
look a little on what is behind, and very much on what is before me. It
creates in my mind a variety of thoughts, and all of them unpleasant.

It is true, my Lord, what you say, that, through our public life, we
have generally sailed on somewhat different tacks. We have so,
undoubtedly; and we should do so still, if I had continued longer to
keep the sea. In that difference, you rightly observe that I have always
done justice to your skill and ability as a navigator, and to your good
intentions towards the safety of the cargo and of the ship's company. I