My Lord Southwell received your letter very safe, and, imagining you would be in Ireland, directed his answer thither. He desires his best compliments, and will trouble you soon with some law queries, which however he says he would equally have done had you remained in your former situation. His son is daily mending, almost beyond our warmest hopes. If I should be under the necessity of troubling you, I’ll draw upon Norton. I take it for granted this letter will find you in Dublin, where I suppose you were this week invested with your dignity. I have only to wish health and many years to enjoy it, and to assure you that I am, dear sir, &c.
I hope you got the letter that I addressed to Tom’s coffeehouse the latter end of last month.
In March, 1767, he reached London. A letter to his father in the following month returns thanks for a present (of money) paid him by Lord Catherlough; adverts to the parliamentary exertions of his friend Lord Northington; to the debates, &c., on American disturbance; and requests that he will not insist upon his residing in town in summer; “for studies in a farmhouse, far from obstructing, would advance their progress;” concluding with the promise–“It is my firm resolution to apply as closely as possible, till I go to Ireland, to the study of law and the practice of the Court of Chancery; and hope soon to make up for the time I have lost.”
Soon afterward he was called to the Irish Bar. Such a profession, in either country, seems one of the hazardous casts in the lottery of life. Patience is one of its requisites, and family funds to fall back upon in case of failure, another. Time, diligence, and aptitude, can alone untie the tongues and store the bags of the youthful, the silent, and the briefless.
