^T. 34.] OF THE ORDERS IN COUNCIL. 35 



be imagined. I have known members of both Houses 

 reject the offer with indignation ; but some there were 

 who accepted them, justifying the practice by con- 

 tending that it was nothing more than the custom of 

 giving shares of loans to different persons ; but if 

 these were given to any one having a discretion in 

 settling the terms of the loan, it would be liable to the 

 same objections as giving shares to members while the 

 bill was in progress through Parliament. The only 

 time I ever held any shares, except in University 

 College, was when, a qualification being required as a 

 director in a company got up for the benefit of the 

 negroes, I purchased the number required at a con- 

 siderable loss of money. 



Among the patriotic gifts for services in regard to 

 the Orders in Council and commercial policy generally, 

 as well as respecting the income-tax, but certainly not 

 on account of the negroes and the abolition of the slave- 

 trade as well as slavery, may be reckoned the kind- 

 ness of a very respectable man in the county of Dur- 

 ham, Mr Shakespeare Reed, who, about the year 1828, 

 wrote to inform me that he had, after providing for his 

 widow and his near relations, left me his property in 

 consideration of my public services. I inquired about 

 this good man of my friend Lambton (Lord Durham), 

 and found that he was a very wealthy person ; but, 

 from my friend's way of talking, evidently not agreeing 

 with him in county politics. A few years after, I re- 

 ceived a letter, in which he called upon me, from the 

 relation he said subsisting between us, as his heir, to 

 put down "the political set of pretended philanthro- 

 pists who were seeking the emancipation of slavery in 

 the West Indies." He appealed to me, on the above- 



