46 ELECTION PROSPECTS. [1812. 



fifty-three, I really begin to be conscious that I am 

 growing older. And as Quin said lie would not 

 whistle Falstaff for any man, so I should be sorry to 

 continue clinging to my situation without attending 

 as assiduously as I have been used to do. I once 

 thought of frankly stating to the county that I could 

 not be quite so constant an attendant, but that if they 

 chose to elect me on that understanding, I would con- 

 tinue to serve them as well as I could ; but, on reflec- 

 tion, this appeared too presuming in me to propose ; 

 though, had it come from the opposite party, the case 

 would have been different. I am scribbling in great 

 haste and much confusion, owing to our happening to 

 be what we call in Yorkshire and probably you in 

 Cumberland flitting, after being three months in the 

 same house; and though we are moving to another in 

 the same place, it is no light piece of work to a man 

 who has rather a faculty for heaping together, wher- 

 ever he is, a pretty ample store of books and pam- 

 phlets, c. &c. I am writing, too, against time, for 

 the letters here go to the post between three and four, 

 and it is now much past three. I had various sub- 

 jects on which I wished to write to you, more espe- 

 cially on the pleas suggested in the article on Par- 

 liamentary Reform in the last ' Edinburgh Review/ 

 which I conceive must be yours, on the same ground 

 as I conceive several others in the same Review to 

 be yours viz., that I know not who else can have 

 written them ; and I know you never plead alibis, if 

 I may so express it, or conceive it is any reason why 

 you may not do a twentieth tiling that you have 

 already nineteen others on your hands."''" As you be- 



* In the 'Edinburgh Review' for July 1M2 : 



Vol. XX., art. viii. 'A Letter to II. Urou-haiii, Esq., M.P., on the sul> 



