In an inordinately long letter to his constituents, Mr. Grantley
Berkeley defends his " character and position" as a public man " assailed by Cainis4 passions," and certain " men of the press." He labours through endless paragraphs to prove that he is not a "political auteniaton"; and then car- ries the war into the enemy's camp, by proclaiming the cause of Earl Fitz- hardinge's opposition —
" 1 at once tell you, it arises in the hatred and fear of a revengeful woman, who rules and enslaves the owner of the Castle. That woman is well known to you in reputation, by the letters of her husband and a sort of pamphlet which appeared some time since in the Cheltenham papers, as well as through the more recent trial at Gloucester. This woman, from my knowledge of some of the past actions of her life, as well as from the firm remonstrances my duty as a brother im- perieuely called en me to suggest in regard to her introduction to family mansions, till cleared fur her reception, personally hates me, and fears my being by the side of leer victim, even in matters of occasional business; lest at the eleventh hour I should step in with a counsel, which never comes too late. It is that fear which makes her desirous of severing me from the county and from you, and by that act from him and from his castle." [The trial was one for libel, In which a Mrs. Barker was plaintiff; the libel imputing to her great intimacy with Lord Fitz- hanlinge.] Mr. Berkeley winds up by declaring that—" Crushed as my fortune has been by the emancipation of the slaves, (I don't regret the support I gave the measure,) and persecuted and oppressed in my private finances as I have been and am by the refusal of Lord Fitzhardingo to keep his compact with me in regard to public expenses "—he is, and will remain, Representative of West Gloucestershire "until displaced from a poet of honourable ambition:
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