own interest as to leave London when you had contrived to make it so agreeable a habitation to me.
I did not hear of this vehicle till to-day, and to tell the truth, I rather chose to express my sentiments to your Lordship in writing, than to wait upon you in person, because however imperfectly I may have executed my purpose of discovering my sense of the obligations I owe your Lordship, I still could do it better by writing than by speech.
I am, with the greatest sincerity, my Lord,
Your Lordship's
Most obedient and most humble Servant,
David Hume.
But Shelburne, though temporarily deprived of Hume as a guest, received at this time another and as illustrious a visitor in Benjamin Franklin. Long afterwards, when the country of the one seemed sinking under the blows of repeated misfortune, and that of the other was with difficulty struggling into existence, these two men were called to end the fratricidal strife and to separate the contending nations, if it were possible, as friends. They then looked back to the time when, in days of comparative calm, nineteen years before they had "talked upon the means of promoting the happiness of mankind, a subject far more agreeable to their natures than the best concerted plans for spreading misery and ruin."[1]
The greater part of 1764 was passed by Shelburne between improvements in the country and society in London, only disturbed by the distant rumours of the schemes, actual and potential, of George Grenville for taxing America, and by the election of the Directors of the East India Company, in which he supported the list of Lawrence Sulivan, in order, it was supposed, to get Barré sent out to Bengal as Governor-General,[2] but in reality from a strong distrust of the policy of territorial conquest represented by Lord Clive,[3] who had been again
