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fortunate perfon without the warmest emotion and fympathy. What must a man's feelings be, who finds himself excluded from the most brilliant fituation, and noblest inheritance that this world affords, and reduced to an humiliating dependence on thofe who, in the natural course of events, fhould have looked up to him for protection and fupport? What must his feelings be, when on a retrospective view, he beholds a series of calamities attending his family, that is without example in the annals of the unfortunate; calamities, of which those they experienced after their acceffion to the throne of England, were only a continuation? Their misfortunes began with their royalty, adhered to them through ages, increafed with the increase of their dominions, did not forfake them when dominion was no more; and as he has reafon to dread, from his own experience, are not yet terminated. It will afford no alleviation or comfort, to recollect that part of this black lift of calamities arofe from

from the imprudence of his ancestors; and that many gallant men, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, have at different periods been involved in their ruin.

Our fympathy for this unfortunate perfon is not checked by any blame which can be thrown on himself. He furely had no share in the errors of the firft Charles, the profligacy of the fecond, or the impolitic and bigoted attempts of James against the laws and established religion of Great Britain and Ireland; therefore, whilst I contemplate with approbation and gratitude the conduct of thofe patriots who refifted and expelled that infatuated monarch, afcertained the rights of the fubject, and fettled the conftitution of Great Britain on the firm bafis of freedom on which it has stood ever fince the Revolution, and on which I hope it will ever ftand; yet I freely acknowledge, that I never could fee the unfortunate Count Albany without fentiments : VOL. II.

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of compaffion and the most lively fympathy.

I write with the more warmth, as I have heard of fome of our countrymen, who, during their tours through Italy, made the humble ftate to which he is reduced a frequent theme of ridicule, and who, as often as they met him in public, affected to pas by with an air of fneering infult. The motive to this is as bafe and abject as the behaviour is unmanly; thofe who endea vour to make misfortune an object of ridicule, are themselves the objects of deteftation. A British nobleman or gentleman has certainly no occafion to form an intimacy with the Count Albany; but while he appears under that name, and claims no other title, it is ungenerous, on every accidental meeting, not to behave to him with the refpect due to a man of high rank, and the delicacy due to a man highly unfortunate.

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One thing is certain; that the fame difpofition which makes men infolent to the weak, renders them flaves to the powerful; and thofe who are moft apt to treat this unfortunate person with an oftentatious contempt at Florence, would have been his moft abject flatterers at St. James's.

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LETTER LXXIV.

Florence.

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Na country where men are permitted

to speak and write, without restraint, on the measures of government; where almoft every citizen may flatter himself with the hopes of becoming a part of the legislature; where eloquence, popular talents, and political intrigues, lead to honours, and open a broad road to wealth and power; men, after the firft glow of youth is paft, are more obedient to the loud voice of ambition than to the whifpers of love. But in defpotic ftates, and in monarchies which verge towards defpotifm, where the will of the prince is law; or, which amounts nearly to the fame thing, where the law yields to the will of the prince; where it is dangerous to speak or write on general politics, and

death

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