| Description | "[Indignant reply to a correspondent who has evidently complained of not receiving an answer to an earlier letter, explaining that he (Boulton) has been in Cornwall for some months, then in Wales, and then exceedingly busy on year’s-end accounts etc.
He goes on: ‘I think proper to mention these facts for obvious reasons & do assure you that had I not received your last Splenetick epistle you certainly should have received from me in this letter a much handsomer apology for the unavoidable delay of my answer than I now think you are entitled. If you had known how much the Tradesman you shot at, had been out of the reach of your venom’d arrow, you would not have lost it: for if I glory in any thing, it is in being one of those exporting importing Tradesmen whose connections are not circumscribed by the bounds of Europe & that can travil to every Capital city in it without any other letters of credit than those of his own writing. Early in life Fortune give me the option of assuming the character of an idle man, commonly calld a Gentn. but I rather chose to be of the class wch Le Baron Montisque describes as the constant contributors to the purse of the common wealth rather than of another class which he says are always takeing out of it without contributing any thing towards it. Perhaps Sir you have little to do besides the indulgence of your own humour but I have the happiness to have full employment for every minute of the day & he that takes up my time upon trifles robs me of what he cannot repay & then to add abuse to that robbery savors very much upon violence. I have now discharged all my gaul…’]" |