ceeded my father, who died about fix months ago, in the profefforship of Oriental literature. I have much to fay upon this subject, and hope shortly to write fully to you about it. I long to know how you are, as well as that best of women your mother, and your fifter, (to whofe friendship I am fo much obliged). Prefent my affectionate regards to them. Farewell, and remember me.

Some catalogues of my father's library, which is to be fold in September, have been forwarded, I think, to Elmsley, and I have ordered one to be fent to you.

Mr. JONES to Dr. WHEELER.

MY DEAR SIR;

September 2, 1780.

The Parliament being fuddenly diffolved, I muft beg you, as one of my beft and trueft friends, to make it known in the University, that I decline giving the learned body any further trouble, and am heartily forry for that which has already been given them. It is needless to add, what you well know, that I fhould never have been the first to have troubled them at all. I

always thought a delegation to parliament from so respectable a society, a laudable object of true ambition; but I confidered it as a diftant object, as the reward of long labour and meritorious service in our country; and I conceived, that, had I filled a judge's feat in India, with the approbation of my countrymen, I might on my return be fixed on as a proper representative of the University. Had not that happened which you know, I should no more have thought of standing now, than of asking for a peerage. As to principles in politics, if fuccefs at Oxford, at any

my

future time, depend upon a change of them,

Were

my cause is hopeless: I cannot alter or conceal them without abandoning either my reafon or my integrity; the firft of which is my only guide, and the fecond my chief comfort in this paffage through life. I inclined to boaft of any thing, I should certainly boast of making those principles my rule of conduct, which I learned from the best of men in ancient and modern times; and which, my reafon tells me, are conducive to the happiness of mankind. As to

men, I am certainly not hoftile to the minif ters, from whom I have received obligations; but I cannot in confcience approve their measures.

Mr. JONES to Mr. CARTWRIGHT.

DEAR SIR,

September 4, 1780.

Permit me again to exprefs

(what I can never exprefs too often, or too warmly) my very fincere thanks for your kind letter, dated May 8, and to affure you,

as I

may with the greatest truth, that I am just as much obliged to you as if your kind

nefs had been attended with the moft brilliant fuccefs; but as my ftrength in the great elective body of our Univerfity, (which ftrength, all circumftances confidered, was very respectable,) lay chiefly among the nonrefident voters, it would be unpardonably ungrateful in me were I to give my friends the trouble of taking long journeys, without a higher probability of success than my late enquiries have left me room to expect. I therefore decline giving any farther trouble Life-V. I.

Y

to the learned body, and am heartily forry for that which has already been given them, though not originally by me or my friends. I am perfectly confcious that had I been fo fortunate as to fucceed at Oxford, I fhould not have advanced, nor wished to advance, a single step in the career of ambition, but fhould cheerfully have facrificed my repose and peace of mind to fuch a course as I conceived likely to promote the public good; and this consciousness cannot but prevent me from being in the leaft depreffed by my failure of fuccefs. I fhould never repent of this little ftruggle, if it had produced no other fruit than the testimony of your approbation. The hurry of the general election to a profeffional man, has obliged me to suspend till another long vacation, two little works, which I hoped to finish in the remainder of this. The firft is a treatise On the Maritime Jurifprudence of the Athenians, illuftrated by five fpeeches of Demofthenes in commercial causes; and the fecond, a differtation On the Manners of the Arabians before

the Time of Mahomet, illuftrated by the seven poems, which were written in letters of gold, and suspended in the temple at Mecca, about the beginning of the fixth century. When they are printed, I fhall be proud in submitting them to your judgment, as their excellence is well known.

Mr. JONES to Lord ALTHORP.

Sept. 4, 1780.

The intelligence which you fo kindly fent me, my dear Lord, and which was perfectly unexpected, has fufpended for a fhort time my excurfion to Paffy; for though I have not received any positive retainers for election business, yet there will be fome contests in Wales, where I may poffibly be employed; and, though the whole system of election-laws, and of elections themselves, (I always except the Grenville judicature) is quite repugnant to my ideas of the conftitution, yet it would be thought unprofeffional to be absent from England at such a time; nor ought indeed any Englishman to be ab