I have to thank you for the obligation which you have already conferred upon me, by the welcome which I have, upon repeated occasions, experienced under your roof.
When I was last in London, you gave me a general invitation, which I value more than a treasury warrant: an invitation to the 'feast of reason'; and what I like still more, the 'flow of the soul,' which you dispense with liberal and elegant abundance, is, in my estimation, a privilege of enjoying certain felicity.
The comparison between the places that come of courting a patron and this sublime 'felicity' that comes of friendship must still be maintained--'and we know that riches and honour are desirable only as a means of felicity, and that they often fail of the end.'
It is necessary now to give an account of his political opinions, so that Mr. Burke may be assured that Mr. Boswell is his supporter:
Most heartily do I rejoice that our present Ministers have, at last, yielded to conciliation. For amidst all the sanguinary zeal of my countrymen I have professed myself a friend to our fellow-subjects in America, so far as they claim an exemption from being taxed by the representatives of the King's British subjects. I do not perfectly agree with you; for I deny the Declaratory Act; and I am a warm Tory, in its true constitutional sense.
It will be noticed that the assertion of independence adds to this declaration a considerable degree of importance. After so careful a preparation the real point of the letter may be disclosed:
I wish I were a Commissioner, or one of the Secretaries of the Commission, for the grand treaty. I am to be in London this spring, and if His Majesty should ask me what I would choose, my answer will be, to assist at the compact between Britain and America.
The letter to Burke is only less absurd than the letter to Chatham, which was quoted above. What most surprises us is not the vanity of the young man who confided to Chatham his hopes and prospects, nor his impudence in asking a Minister to favour him with a letter and in bothering Burke with his political opinions, but the entire ignorance displayed by a man of intelligence about the kind of impression that letters such as these would produce upon their recipients.