Note 75 — A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ.

‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Mr. Gifford here seems to exclude his band of gentlemen-pensioners, whom he pays on earth, from bursting with obscure worth into the realms of day. It is thus that Jacobin sentiments sprout from the commonest sympathy, and are even unavoidable in a government critic, when the common claims of humanity touch his pity or his self-love.