[Lord Erskine [Thomas Erskine], judge and Whig politician, Lord Chancellor in the Ministry of All the Talents.] Autograph Letter Signed [to Hon. Theresa Villiers?] on the background to his pamphlet on 'The Present War with France'.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. The item is from the Villiers papers, and the recipient is presumably the Theresa, wife of the Hon. George Villiers (1759-1827), daughter of Lord Boringdon and sister of the Earl of Morley. (See the entry on her son Thomas Hyde Villiers (1801-1832) in the History of Parliament.) 2pp, 4to. Bifolium. In good condition, folded once. Signed ‘Erskine’. Clearly writing about his pamphlet ‘A View of the Causes and Consequences of the Present War with France’, which went through at least twelve editions on its publication in 1797, he begins: ‘My Dear Madam / I send the Pamphlet I alluded to last night; It was written on slips of paper in the midst of all the business I was engaged in at the time; not at home, but in open court whilst the causes were trying - When it was not my turn to examine a witness or to speak to the Jury, then I wrote a little bit; & so on ny snatches; as there was not a moment to be lost in the crisis of folly which has characterised almost as much as at present our unhappy country’. He apologizes for ‘the incorrectness - I had not a moment to amend the text much less to correct the press in the different editions, and since I have had leisure to look it over, I have only remarked that I have no more merit in my observations as a politician, than would belong to a medical man who should pronounce that a person under an unremitting course of a slow poison would come by it infallibly to a premature dissolution’.