This gentleman is a declared
opponent of the ministry in parliament; and having an opulent
fortune, piques himself upon living in the country, and
maintaining old English hospitality -- By the bye, this is a phrase
very much used by the English themselves both in words and
writing; but I never heard of it out of the island, except by way
of irony and sarcasm. What the hospitality of our forefathers has
been I should be glad to see recorded, rather in the memoirs of
strangers who have visited our country, and were the proper
objects and judges of such hospitality, than in the discourse and
lucubrations of the modern English, who seem to describe it from
theory and conjecture. Certain it is, we are generally looked
upon by foreigners, as a people totally destitute of this virtue;
and I never was in any country abroad, where I did not meet with
persons of distinction, who complained of having been
inhospitably used in Great Britain. A gentleman of France, Italy,
or Germany, who has entertained and lodged an Englishman at his
house, when he afterwards meets with his guest at London, is
asked to dinner at the Saracen's-head, the Turk's-head, the
Boar's-head, or the Bear, eats raw beef and butter, drinks
execrable port, and is allowed to pay his share of the reckoning.
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