In short, we have for four or five years displayed no alacrity or address, but in provoking our friends and furnishing weapons of annoyance to our enemies; and the unhappy facility with which the Parliament has subscribed to all these oversights has deceived the Government into security, and encouraged it to pull almost the whole fabric on its own head. We can escape but by concessions and disgrace; and, when we attain peace, the terms will prove that Parliamentary majorities have voted away the wisdom, glory, and power of the nation. The House of Commons has exposed itself wofully these last days in a less affair. They have refused, voted, unvoted, and revoted an inquiry into the conduct of the war; and all the Generals at the bar have declared the impossibility of conquering America: so, the House has nothing to do to preserve its consequence, but to vote it shall still be conquered. Palliser's trial has ended as shamefully.* He is acquitted, with honour, of not having obeyed his Admiral's signals; which is termed blamable for not having given the reason why he did not; and that reason was the rottenness of his mast, with which he returned to Portsmouth, without its being repaired yet. The world is expecting his restoration; for, when Keppel risked his own reputation to save Palliser's, ought not the latter to be recompensed for accusing his benefactor? But I am sick of specifying all our ignominy; I wish I had any tittle-tattle of less consequence to fill my letters with. I will go answer yours, and try to forget England, as it has forgotton itself! Oh! but you ask if Byron has beaten D'Estaing and taken Martinico? Not quite; on the contrary, our conquerors are swept did not fold their arms in foolish despair. They were then taught, as distress will indeed effectually teach any nation or individual, that their best dependence was on themselves. They had recourse to that policy which Swift had in vain advised half a century before. They not only used their own manufactures, but entered into a non-importation agreement of any whatever from England. This resolution was embraced with the usual characteristic ardour of the Irish. The despondency of the manufacturers, of the lowest order, was changed to thanksgiving; some of the fashionable gentry, who had been more supine than others, were reanimated to a sense of their duty; while the volunteer bands increased not more in numbers than in spirit." Vol. i. p. 389.-Ed. *Sir Hugh Palliser's trial lasted three-and-twenty days, twenty of which were spent in examining witnesses, and three in debating upon the sentence; during which time it is said the members of the court were sometimes so loud in dispute, that the people were obliged to be turned off the deck of the Sandwich to prevent their overhearing it. In announcing Sir Hugh Palliser's acquittal to George Selwyn, Dr. Warner writes, “Here are the exact and all the words which the King said to him the first time he was at Court, Sir Hugh, how does your leg do?"— ED. Lord Carlisle, speaking of his relation to the Admiral, in a letter to George Selwyn, says, "Byron's situation is a very hard one; for ignorant people conceive it is as easy to hinder D'Estaing from coming out of Martinique, as it would be to hinder the Duke of Northumberland driving out of his gate, supposing you was superior in coal-carts and hackney-coaches to make a blockade."-ED. away by a mortality in Santa Lucia and in Georgia. Content yourself with privateering; we have no other success. The Presbyterians of Scotland will not condole with you on the Pope's illness; they forswear him tooth and nail.* Mrs. Anne Pitt is confined, and, the last time I heard of her, was very bad. Make many compliments, pray, for me to the House of Lucan; but, between you and me, I am not at all delighted with their intending to bring me a present. I do not love presents, and much less from any body but very dear friends. That family and I are upon very civil terms; our acquaintance is of modern date, and rather waned than improved. Lady Lucan has an astonishing genius for copying whatever she sees. The pictures I lent her from my collection, and some advice I gave her, certainly brought her talent to marvellous perfection in five months; for before she painted in crayons, and as ill as any fine lady in England. She models in wax, and has something of a turn towards poetry; but her prodigious vivacity makes her too volatile in every thing, and my lord follows wherever she leads. This is only for your private ear. I desire to remain as well as I am with them; but we shall never be more intimate than we are. I am not at all acquainted with your Lord Bishopt and my lady, his wife. His Walpole here alludes to a motion made on the 5th of this month by Lord George Gordon, that a petition of the Papists of Scotland, which had been recommended by the King to the House through Lord North, might be thrown over the table. As the motion was not seconded, the Speaker declined to read it. The Earl of Carlisle says, in a letter of the 7th," Lord George Gordon made a speech upon the state of Scotland, for which he ought to be shut up; he wept several times in the course of it, produced an old print of the Marquis of Huntley, offered to make Lord North a present of it, and called upon twenty members by their names."-ED. Lady Lucan was the daughter and co-heiress of James Smith, Esq., of Cannons Leigh, Devon. She was married, in 1760, to Sir Charles Bingham, who in 1776, was created Baron Lucan, and, in 1795, advanced to the earldom of Lucan. In 1781, her daughter Lavinia was married to John, first Earl Spencer. She died in 1814. In a notice of Walpole's" Anecdotes of Painting," which appeared in the Annual Register for 1780, Lady Lucan is said to have arrived at copying the most exquisite works of Peter Oliver, Hoskins, and Cooper, with a genius that almost depreciates those masters."-ED. The Honourable and Reverend Frederick Hervey, in 1767 presented to the bishoprick of Cloyne, and in 1769 promoted to the see of Derry. In the December of 1779, he succeeded his brother Augustus as fourth Earl of Bristol. His wife was the daughter of Sir Jermyn Davers, Bart. Hardy in his Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont, gives the following striking account of this eccentric nobleman: "In one respect he was not unlike Villiers, Duke of Buckinham, Every thing by starts and nothing long.' Generous, but uncertain; splendid, but fantastical; an admirer of the fine arts, without any just selection; engaging, often licentious in conversation; extremely polite, extremely violent. His distribution of church livings must always be mentioned with warm approbation. Though he scarcely ever attended Parliament, and spent most of his time in Italy, he was now (1783) called upon to correct the abuses of Parliament, and direct the vessel of state in that course, where statesmen of the most experience, and persons of the calmest judgment, have had the misfortune totally to fail. His progress from his diocess to the metropolis, and his entrance into it, were perfectly correspondent to the rest of his conduct. Through every town on the road he seemed to court, and was received with all warlike honours; and I remember seeing him pass by the Parliament-house in Dublin, (Lords mother, who was much my friend, I believe, did not highly reverence his sincerity; I never in my life met him at her house. Adieu! my dear sir. Do not let rumours good or bad agitate you. Bear public misfortunes with firmness. Private griefs hurry away our thoughts, and belong solely to ourselves; but we may be excused taking more than our share in general calamities. LETTER CCCVI. Arlington Street, May 29, 1779. I HAVE two letters from you unaswered of the 14th and 15th of this month. I begin to reply to them; though I believe my response will not set out before June for want of corporality. The best news I know is what you tell me of the Spanish monarch's resolution of remaining neuter. We seem able to cope with France, who makes war in our own piddling style. We both fish for islets that used to escape through the meshes of former military drag-nets. Some attempt on Ireland we expect; I hope the Prince of Nassau will command it. All this last week we were whispered ministerially into a belief of Byron having demolished, taken, and killed D'Estaing and all his squadron. Some doubted whether it was not an artifice to fill the loan; and so it has proved. The two Admirals looked at one another, but did not hurt a pendant of each other's head. The house of Commons sits from day to day, examining into the conduct of all the other Generals and Admirals that have been looking at the Americans and French for these five years, and of the Ministers who sent them to look the colonies into unlimited submission. Future historians will have a brave collection of papers to revel in. You shall certainly have my tragedy when your nephew returns; but I doubt it will shock more than please you, for nothing can be more disgusting than the subject. I approve and exhort you not to preach to your nephew. Wait till you see him, and then you can instil your sentiments by degrees. As he has already corrected many effervescences, I trust to his good sense and good heart for his still improving; but, believe me, there must be a very solid fund to resist the depravation of this country. It is lost, it is distracted. It sinks every day, and yet its extravagance and dissipation rather augment than subside. Though we have danced like Bacchanals all the winter, there is a new subscription on foot for a sumptuous ball at the Pantheon. We are like the Israelites that capered round the golden and Commons were then both sitting) escorted by a body of dragoons, full of spirits and talk, apparently enjoying the eager gaze of the surrounding multitude, and displaying altogether the self-complacency of a favourite Marshal of France on his way to Versailles, rather than the grave deportment of a Prelate of the Church of England."-Ed. *The Mysterious mother. calf, though they were to fight their way out of the Desert. I check my hand; it is grievous to condemn one's country! I ask myself, if I am not grown old and splenetic; but alas! America is lost, credit supported by gross falsehoods, all comfort hanging on a King of Spain's mood: one had need be very young to dance without reflection ! May 31st. I must finish my letter to-night, for I go out of town to-morrow for the summer, and leave the Parliament to give balls or supplies as it pleases. Lord Cornwallis sails to-day to command America, but the fleet is not yet gone. I remember, when I was a boy, hearing that it had been a great joke in Queen Anne's war, that Lord Peterborough* was galloping about in Spain inquiring for his army-Lord Cornwallis will have none to hunt for. The old Duke of Rutland is dead, at eighty-four. I think he had been Knight of the Garter above fifty years. The Irish do not grow into better humourt-I know nothing that is improved but our climate-so, I hope we shall preserve this part of the island at least. P.S. Do not expect me to be so assiduous in summer as I have been of late; nay, you may wish I should have no occasion to be so. * Charles Mordant, Earl of Peterborough, who, in 1705, took Barcelona, and in the following winter, with only 280 horse and 900 foot, enterprised and accomplished the conquest of Valentia. Walpole, in his Royal and Noble Authors, describes him as having been "gallant as Amadis, and as brave, but a little more expeditious in his journeys; for he is said to have seen more kings and more postilions than any man in Europe." In the latter part of his life he was the intimate friend and companion of Pope "Know, all the distant din that world can keep In a letter of the 3rd of June to Selwyn, Dr. Warner says, "The increase of secret armed associations throughout Ireland, the non-importation agreement, and the success which attended the intrigues of the American agents in their endeavours to stir up an inflammable and depressed people, were sufficient to justify the alarm of the ministry and the people at large, and to threaten to add the misfortune of a civil war in Ireland to the hazardous and momentous contests in which England was already engaged with France, Spain, and America."—ED. LETTER CCCVII. Strawberry Hill, June 16, 1779. ALAS! my dear sir, you have been mistaken, and must no more put your trust in the obstinacy of Princes: at least, that of one can surmount that of another. The King of Spain's rescript is arrived and delivered, and the Brest fleet is sailed with both white and red cockades. The declaration is said not to be very injurious; but, after all possible endeavours at pacification, his Catholic Majesty is obliged to take his part, especially as we have made some captures on his subjects. The Ministers were urged even late last night* on the hostility of Spain, but would own nothing. This morning they avow every thing; and, to your great surprise probably, the Parliament is to rise to-morrow or next day! As events have not proved the wisdom of measures, one can recollect no great confidence from such a step: but I don't pretend to reason on what I do not understand; my business is to tell you facts. In short, the Brest fleet has been sailed many days. The Prince of Beauvaut-if destined for Ireland, we should probably have heard it by this time; if to meet the Spanish fleet, the object might be Gibraltar. I shall not boast of having been a better soothsayer than you, when I foretold that the American war would be of short duration. It is a trieste honour to be verified a prophet of woes. Were I vain of the character, a Spanish war, added to an American one, were a fine field; but I do not ambition being a Jeremiah, though my countrymen are so like the Jews. Nor does it require inspiration to prophesy, when one has nothing to do but to calculate. Were you here, you would not be alarmed. You would see no panic; you would hear of nothing but diversions. The Ministers affirm the majority of America is with us, and it is credited. Were they to tell us half the Spanish fleet would come over to us, it would be credited too. When it does not, perhaps they will tell us it has.-Well! what is most to be dreaded is the dissipation of our delusion. When the réveil comes, it will be serious indeed! You see I am not likely to be barren of matter, and you will be sorry that I write oftener than I foresaw. The middle period of our correspondence was the most agreeable. Its early part was the journal of a civil war, and of no glorious one in Flanders. Fifteen years after I sent you victory upon victory, and conquest upon conquest. For the last five years, my letters have been the records of a mouldering empire. What is now to come I know not: we have, they say, maintained ourselves against France and Spain; true, but * In the course of the debate on Mr. Thomas Townsend's motion for an address to the King to defer the prorogation.-ED. + He did not go. The French fleet, consisting of about twenty-eight sail of the line, under the command of M. D'Orvilliers, sailed from Brest on the 4th of June.-ED. |