The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. | Page 2

without waiting to consult him, instantly
obtained an injunction from the Court of Chancery to stop the sale.
What he himself felt, on receiving intelligence of the injury done him
by one from whom his kindness deserved a very different return, will
be best conveyed in his own words. The following is an extract of a
letter to a friend, which he dictated on this subject from a sick-bed.
BATH, 15th Feb., 1797.
"My Dear Laurence,--
"On the appearance of the advertisement, all newspapers and all letters
have been kept back from me till this time. Mrs. Burke opened yours,
and finding that all the measures in the power of Dr. King, yourself,
and Mr. Woodford, had been taken to suppress the publication, she
ventured to deliver me the letters to-day, which were read to me in my
bed, about two o'clock.
"This affair does vex me; but I am not in a state of health at present to
be deeply vexed at anything. Whenever this matter comes into
discussion, I authorize you to contradict the infamous reports which (I
am informed) have been given out, that this paper had been circulated
through the ministry, and was intended gradually to slide into the press.
To the best of my recollection I never had a clean copy of it but one,
which is now in my possession; I never communicated that, but to the
Duke of Portland, from whom I had it back again. But the Duke will set
this matter to rights, if in reality there were two copies, and he has one.
I never showed it, as they know, to any one of the ministry. If the Duke
has really a copy, I believe his and mine are the only ones that exist,
except what was taken by fraud from loose and incorrect papers by
S----, to whom I gave the letter to copy. As soon as I began to suspect
him capable of any such scandalous breach of trust, you know with
what anxiety I got the loose papers out of his hands, not having reason
to think that he kept any other. Neither do I believe in fact (unless he
meditated this villany long ago) that he did or does now possess any
clean copy. I never communicated that paper to any one out of the very

small circle of those private friends from whom I concealed nothing.
"But I beg you and my friends to be cautious how you let it be
understood that I disclaim anything but the mere act and intention of
publication. I do not retract any one of the sentiments contained in that
memorial, which was and is my justification, addressed to the friends
for whose use alone I intended it. Had I designed it for the public, I
should have been more exact and full. It was written in a tone of
indignation, in consequence of the resolutions of the Whig Club, which
were directly pointed against myself and others, and occasioned our
secession from that club; which is the last act of my life that I shall
under any circumstances repent. Many temperaments and explanations
there would have been, if I had ever had a notion that it should meet the
public eye."
In the mean time a large impression, amounting, it is believed, to three
thousand copies, had been dispersed over the country. To recall these
was impossible; to have expected that any acknowledged production of
Mr. Burke, full of matter likely to interest the future historian, could
remain forever in obscurity, would have been folly; and to have passed
it over in silent neglect, on the one hand, or, on the other, to have then
made any considerable changes in it, might have seemed an
abandonment of the principles which it contained. The author, therefore,
discovering, that, with the exception of the introductory letter, he had
not in fact kept any clean copy, as he had supposed, corrected one of
the pamphlets with his own hand. From this, which was found
preserved with his other papers, his friends afterwards thought it their
duty to give an authentic edition.
The "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity" were originally presented in
the form of a memorial to Mr. Pitt. The author proposed afterwards to
recast the same matter in a new shape. He even advertised the intended
work under the title of "Letters on Rural Economics, addressed to Mr.
Arthur Young"; but he seems to have finished only two or three
detached fragments of the first letter. These being too imperfect to be
printed alone, his friends inserted them in the memorial, where they
seemed best to cohere. The memorial had been fairly copied, but did
not appear to have been examined or corrected, as some trifling errors
of the transcriber were