"Besides, my dear BAILIFF, there are many persons to whom your application would be made with infinitely more propriety than to me. The nature of PEPPER ARDEN is mild, gentle, accommodating to the extreme, and I will venture to engage that he would by no means refuse a reasonable contribution. MACDONALD is, among those who know him, a very proverb for generosity; and will certainly stand by you, together with DUNDAS and the LORD ADVOCATE, if there be fidelity in Scotchmen. BEARCROFT too will open his purse to you with the same blind and improvident magnanimity with which he risqued his opinion in your favour: besides, you are sure of PITT.--A real zeal for your welfare, a most disinterested friendship, and some consciousness that I have materially helped to involve you; and, believe me, not the sordid motive of shifting either the blame, or the expence upon the shoulders of others, have made me thus eagerly endeavour to put you in the way of consulting your best friends in this very critical emergency.
"As to myself, you are possessed already of the circumstances which render any immediate assistance on my part wholly out of the question. Except half a dozen pair of black plush breeches, which I have but this instant received, I can offer you nothing. My superfluities extend no further. But better times may soon arrive, and I will not fail you then. The present Chief Justice of the King's Bench cannot long retain his situation; and as you are one whom I have selected from among many to be the friend of my bosom, I will now reveal to you a great secret in the last arrangement of judicial offices. Know then, that Sir ELIJAH IMPEY is the man fixed upon to preside in the chief seat of criminal and civil jurisprudence of this country. I am to succeed him in BENGAL; and then, my dear THOMAS, we may set the malice of juries at defiance. If they had given FOX as many diamonds by their verdict as they have pounds, rest assured that I am not a person likely to fail you, after I shall have been there a little while, either through want of faith, or want of means. Set your mind, therefore, at ease; as to the money--why, if PITT is determined to have nothing to do with it, and if nobody else will pay it, I think the most adviseable thing, in your circumstances, will be to pay it yourself. Not that you are to be ultimately at the expence of a single shilling. The contents of this letter will fully prove that I mean to reimburse you what I am able. For the present, nobody knows better than yourself, not even Lady K----, how ill matters stand with me, and that I find it utterly impossible to obey the dictates of my feelings.