To: Hugh Hume Campbell, 3rd Earl of Marchmont. [?Argeville.] 9 June [n.s.] 1741. Text: MS, BL Add. 37994, fols 13–14v.

I begin a letter in answer to yours of y^e 26^th of March O: S: my dear Lord, without knowing when, where, or how I shall convey it to you. the questions I asked y^r Lordsp relating to the state of y^e Revenue att several periods, require indeed to be answered with that exactness & precision which you cannot give y^m till you have y^r papers about you, and I shall therefore wait till next winter for y^r informations 269on those points. ¹ I can do so the better because I have been forced ^by many disappointments, some of which are of an extraordinary^nature & such as I did not expect, to lay aside all thoughts of writing a continued History of y^e negociations y^t led to the peace of Utrecht, & of y^e Rise & progress of y^e war that preceded some, and followed others of y^m. I must content my self to throw upon paper such notes, anecdotes, & observations, as I have the means of collecting, and the opportunity of making in this retreat. they will be rather memorials for History than History. but they will be authentick, impartial, clear, and so important as to throw sufficient light on the passages of those times, y^t have been falsifyed, and disguised, to serve the turn of party, in a manner that has I presume no example. in what order soever therefore these broken minutes are entered, they will be easily reduced into that which time and matter require. as to the first question, I had already answered ^it to myself as you do. but finding myself quoted, in some private memorials that I have lately perused, for having made y^e objection to Mesnager att y^e time he was att London, I was willing to be confirmed that there was no ground for the objection, & that I had never made it. ²