Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/269

 would have allowed the Duke of York's debts to remain unpaid? I should have laid down a large sum, and have engaged my brethren to have done the same. If I had not succeeded, I should have broken my coronet, and have considered myself of neither greater nor smaller importance than the sign of a duke's head in front of a public-house. But, ever willing to come forward with my life and property, I should expect that the Sovereign would treat me with respect,

I have been written to by the Consul-General for Egypt and Syria, Colonel Campbell, that, if I do not pay one of my numerous creditors, I shall be deprived of my pension. I should like to see that person come forward who dares to threaten a Pitt! Having given themselves a supposed right over the pension, they may take it all. In the early part of my life, there was nothing I feared so much as plague, shipwreck, and debt; it has been my fate to suffer from them all. Respecting my debts, of course I had expectations of their being settled; but if I was deceived in these expectations, I kept in view the sale of my pension, as well as of an annuity of £1500 a-year, left me by my brother, if the worst came to the worst. The importance of the plan I was pursuing must, as you can easily imagine, have appeared most arbitrary, from my coolly deliberating that the moment might