Europe has a mass of debts to pay to the other quarters of the globe; which, on the merit of having improved navigation and invented gunpowder, we have thought we had a right to desolate and plunder; and we have been such savages as to punish each other for our crimes. The Romans havocked the world for glory; the Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, and English, for gold; but each nation thirsted to engross the whole mass, and became scourges to each other. Attila and Hyder Ally are at least as innocent as Julius Cæsar and Lord Clive.

Our fleet is gone to rescue Gibraltar. The French fleet has not yet moved; but the next month will probably be an important one. The negotiations for peace seem to have stopped in their birth, and probably will depend on the events of that month. The Dutch reply to our Manifesto will not raise our credit, as it gives us the lie pretty flatly on our assertion of their having attempted to make us no satisfaction on our complaints of the conduct of Amsterdam. Methinks it were better to be a little accurate, as there are more readers in Europe than our country gentlemen.

I am sorry when I cannot admire all our proceedings; but politics will not always stand the test of cool survey. Indeed, it is not fair to decide on parts, especially in the heat of events. The wisdom of measures must depend on the prudence, goodness, and object of the system, together with a just calculation of the probability of events, and a comparison of the value of the advantage of success with the danger and detriment of miscarriage. I am far from allowing that even wise measures, with all the profit of success, are good; for then

those against whom the faith which holds the moral elements of the world together was no protection. Having terminated his disputes with every enemy and every rival, who buried their mutual animosities in their common detestation against the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot, he drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction; and compounding all the materials of fury, havoc, and desolation into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents on the plains of the Carnatic. Then ensued a scene of wo, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All the horrors of war before known or heard of were mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants flying from their flaming villages in part were slaughtered; others, with out regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank or sacredness of function, fathers torn from children, husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst the goading spears of drivers and the trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in an unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this tempest, fled to walled cities. But escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine." In a letter written home to the East India Directors at the close of the year 1780, Sir Eyre Coote says of Hyder Ali, that "he had taken every measure which could occur to the most experienced general to dis tress us, and to render himself formidable; and that his conduct in his civil capacity had been supported by a degree of political address unequalled by any power that had yet appeared in Indostan."-ED.

fortunate conquerors would be excusable, which I shall never think, but I doubt we are not likely to have that dazzling consolation; nor have I knowledge or penetration enough to discover the beauty of the system that threw us into the American war, and still prefers war with France, Spain, and Holland, to the confession of our mistake. Adieu! my dear sir.

P.S. I am impatient for the History of the Medici.

LETTER CCCL.

Berkeley Square, April 27, 1781.

PERHAPS you may think I am fallen into a lethargy; but it is only the war that is so. At least, though the ocean is covered with navies, they do nothing but walk about in their sleep,-unless you know to the contrary; for you are nearer to the scene of action, if there is any, than we are. The Spanish fleet is said to be retired to Cadiz, and to have civilly left the path to Gibraltar open, which would be very civil. In short, I can tell you nothing but hearsay, or what people say without having heard. It is a month since I wrote to you, and yet nothing has happened but an Extraordinary Gazette or two, which brags, like a bridegroom at threescore, of having forced two little fortresses that begged to be ravished, and of Arbuthnot having balked an inferior squadron. Methinks we Western powers should make peace, and not expose ourselves to the Vandals of the North, who overrun kingdoms in fewer weeks than it costs us years to take an island no bigger than half-a-crown.

The Parliament has quite left off business, though it has not shut up shop. In short, I hope your nephew writes to you, for I can find nothing to say; and where he does, is past my comprehension. If I trusted to my imagination, I should not wonder at its being worn out; but, as I have always piqued myself upon telling nothing but facts that at least I believe true, my eyes and ears are not gone; and, if there was an event no bigger than a grain of millet, I could easily know it; for those drag-nets, our newspapers, let nothing escape them, from whales to the most insignificant fry. But four days ago, the Public Advertiser informed the town that I have a field that wants draining at Strawberry Hill, which no doubt is very important intelligence! Antiquaries used to be ridiculous for recovering trifles from the havoc of time: now we have daily writers that sift the kennels, and save every straw that would be swallowed in the common sewer. Then think what thousands of loiterers we must have, who can buy and read such rubbish, in the midst of a civil war, and wars with the great nations! How contemptible we are! and, to our shame, these journals of our trifling are circulated all over Europe! Don't you blush when you read them? And do you wonder that I have nothing to say? I have always reckoned my own letters very

trifling and superficial; but two misses that correspond would be ashamed of communicating such foolish paragraphs as compose the daily lectures of the metropolis: and yet it is well when they are only foolish-more commonly they are brutal or scandalous.

Well! I have been writing about nothing, and may as well finish. You see my silence is owing to no want of good will.

LETTER CCCLI.

Strawberry Hill, May 6, 1781.

YES, you were in the right in your prophecy of the 21st of April, which I received yesterday. Darby has relieved Gibraltar, without opposition from the Spanish fleet, as we heard two days ago; nay, that he braved them in Cadiz. I think our conduct was not a little rash, but I am sure theirs has been as much the reverse. That of the French is not more explicable, and I can easily believe the King of Spain will resent it.

I am grieved to hear you complain of the gout, and the weakness it leaves in your hands. I wish you had adopted my bootikins. I have suffered terribly in my hands, and my fingers are full of chalkstones, and yet you see I write as well as ever: but do not alarm yourself; your fits have been too rare and too slight to disable you. One always fancies the weakness from a fit incurable; twenty years ago I imagined that I never should walk again.

Our affairs in the East I do believe are very bad;* I am surprised they are not so every where: but France, Spain, and Holland together, seem very feeble enemies. It seems to be a favourable moment for making peace, as it will be some honour to have kept them all at bay.

* On the 30th of April, Lord North had moved for a Committee of Secrecy, to inquire into the causes of the war in the Carnatic. An amendment to leave out the words "of secrecy," proposed by Mr. Fox, was warmly seconded by Mr. Burke. "We are called upon," he said, " by every argument of morality and of policy, by every precept of religion and duty, to make that justice which we reverence as public as the noon-day sun. It has been the sentiment and the sense of all ages. Let me fight with Jupiter,' says Ajax, but give me day-light. Let me have condemnation or let me have acquittal in the face of day.' The acquittal that is secret cannot be honourable; it leaves a stain even upon innocence. The condemnation that is secret cannot be just; it leaves a prejudice in favour of the criminal, injurious to the tribunal by whom he is tried." The amendment was negatived by 134 to 60.-ED.

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LETTER CCCLII.

Berkeley Square, May 16, 1781. By not sending you the first rumours of Lord Cornwallis's victory over the American General, Greene, and by waiting for the confirmation, which is not yet come, though undoubted, I am able to balance accounts, though perhaps you did not desire Fortune to be so impartial. Yesterday we learnt that La Mothe Piquet, who had lain in ambush (no sea-term, I doubt,) at the mouth of the Channel, had fallen in au beau milieu of our fleet from Eustatia, laden with the plunder of all nations, and has taken at least twenty of them. The two men-of-war and two frigates that convoyed all that spoil took to their heels, and, to talk like an Irishman, are on Irish ground in one of their harbours. To-day we invented a re-capture by Darby, but he is not arrived. However, our loss of so much wealth will not comfort the King of Spain for the relief of Gibraltar, nor the Dutch for the loss of St. Eustatia; for I do not suppose that France will invite its allies to the partition, unless, like the lion in the fable, to see her seize all on different pleas,-I should say, prerogatives to which nullum tempus, nullum plea occurrant.

My military details are very brief, for I neither understand them, nor load my memory with them; and for your information it is better I should not, as the quintessence is more easily digested, and can be less contested.

The Gazette of private news will lie in little room. The disconsolate widower, your friend Sir John Dick, is going to be married already; and, which is still more rash at his age, to a giantess. She is the eldest daughter of the late Sir John Clavering, and was ripened by the climate of India, like an orange to a shaddock. I suppose she intends to be a relict, and then to marry some young Gargantua.

Strawberry Hill, 17.

I came hither this morning; but as I shall return to town to-morrow, when the post goes away, my letter will be in time, though a little ashamed of being so meagre. I doubt my despatches are grown very barren, though the field of battle is so extensive; but you must allow that our enemies are not very alert, and that we have some negative credit in not having lost more, after risking so much. As to domestic news, it is no wonder my details are lean. The House of Lords, who never fatigued themselves, are become as antiquated as their college, the Heralds' Office, and as idle. In the other House

* With six sail of the line and two frigates, destined for some secret expedition, De la Motte Piquet fell in, on the 26th of April, with the St. Eustatia convoy, off the coast of Ireland, captured twenty of the merchant-ships, and returned safe with them to port. So anxious was he to secure his prizes before Admiral Darby's return, that he suffered Commodore Hotham, with six of the transports, to escape.ED.

there are not many debates, and the unshaken majority renders those of little consequence.* * The disunion of the leaders increases this supineness. For smaller events, I go so little into the world, that many escape me, and fewer interest me. Can one take much part in the occupations of the grand-children of one's first acquaintance? I might, no doubt, collect paragraphs if I took pains; for certainly no reformation has taken place. Dissipation is at high-water mark; but it is either without variety, novelty, and imagination, or the moroseness of age makes me see no taste in their pleasures. Lateness of hours is the principal feature of the times, and certainly demands no stress of invention. Every fashionable place is still crowded; no instance of selection neither. Gaming is yet general; though money, the principal ingredient, does not abound.† My old favourite game, Faro, is lately revived. I have played but thrice, and not all night, as I used to do; it is not decent to end where one began, nor to sit up with a generation by two descents my juniors. Mr. Fox is the first figure in all the places I have mentioned; the hero in Parliament, at the gaming-table, at Newmarket. Last week he passed four-andtwenty hours without interruption at all three, or on the road from

*There had, a few days before, been a long debate in the House of Commons, on a motion of Sir George Savile for referring the Petition of the Delegated Counties for a Redress of Grievances to a Committee of the whole House. The subscribers to the petition were stated to be "freeholders" of the respective counties, not "delegates" of associations; several members having stated, that they could admit of no such characters in a constitutional point of view. Mr. Wilberforce, then in his twenty-second year, and who had been returned to the new Parliament, for Hull, thus wrote, on the 30th of April, to one of his constituents: "The papers would show you by what a trick the petition was laid upon the table. The petitioners were said to be private freeholders, and as such were gravely read over the names of Christopher Wyvill, Charles Fox, Richard Fitzpatrick, &c. They will, I have no doubt, proceed artfully; but let them once but put in their noses in their delegate capacity, and they will be hunted out as they deserve; and though I will not promise to open, I will accompany the hounds in full cry, with my Lord Advocate at their head—and a fine leader of a pack he is." Mr. Henry Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville, was the " leader of a pack" here spoken of. Sir George Savile's motion was, upon a division, negatived by 212 to 135.-Ed.

The following is Mr. Wilberforce's picture of fashionable life at this period: "When I left the university, so little did I know of general society, that I came up to London stored with arguments to prove the authenticity of Rowley's poems; and now I was at once immersed in politics and fashion. The very first time I went to Boodle's, I won twenty-five guineas of the Duke of Norfolk. I belonged at this time to five clubs-Miles and Evans's, Brooke's, Boodle's, White's, Goostrees. The first time I was at Brookes's, scarcely knowing any one, I joined from mere shyness in play at the Faro table, where George Selwyn kept bank. A friend who knew my inexperience, and regarded me as a victim decked out for sacrifice, called to me, What, Wilberforce, is that you?' Selwyn quite resented the interference, and, turning to him, said in his most expressive tone, 'O, sir, don't interrupt Mr. Wilberforce; he could not be better employed.' Nothing could be more luxurious than the style of these clubs; Fox, Sheridan, Fitzpatrick, and all your leading men frequented them, and associated upon the easiest terms; you chatted, played at cards, or gambled, as you pleased."—ED.

Mr. Fox had, on the 14th, made a long and eloquent speech in support of Mr. Burke's motion relating to the seisure and confiscation of private property on the island of St. Eustatia. A fortnight after, Walpole, in a letter to General Conway