"squeeze a little too much lemon into conversation." They have been called back a little to their own profession-dress, by a magnificent ball which the Prince of Wales gave two nights ago to near six hundred persons, to which the Amazons of both parties were invited; and not a scratch was given or received!

I am impatient for Cavalier Mozzi's answer to Mr. Sharpe's letter. The one you sent me from the former came too late; and, though he mentions the distress that delay would occasion to him by his probably missing the opportunity of buying into the French funds, it was impossible for me to go back. I had avoided the inconvenience of throwing up the refereeship, by the sole expedient of deciding all but the interest on interest, and leaving that to be accommodated by the parties themselves, on which it was impossible for me to pronounce, unless by allowing it to my Lord, which I both thought unjust, and which Cavalier Mozzi himself had almost absolutely forbidden me to grant-I say almost, for, though not positively, he had represented so strongly against it, that, concurring with mine and Mr. Sharpe's sentiments, I could not think myself at liberty to comply; and indeed, if I had, Mr. Duane and I should, after so long a suspense, have been of very little use, as Lucas would have obtained very near all he demanded in the most unbounded manner at first. I have, I am persuaded, offended my Lord much, and do not doubt but that Lucas will have insinuated that I have given his Lordship full excuse for doing any act to my prejudice; but I laugh at that. I am neither fool enough to expect to outlive him, nor care, if I should, whether he totally disinherits me, as I conclude he would. I will not pay the smallest degree of court to him, but rather less, if less could be, since I am become his next heir. I will not owe even what my birth would entitle to, to any insincerity. Judge, then, whether I should not be hurt, if Cavalier Mozzi should suspect me of having acted with any partiality. I doubt whether I have not shown too much on his behalf, though I have often checked myself when I perceived it; for indignation at the treatment of him, resentment on other accounts to his adversaries, and even the vanity, the ostentatious vanity of acting uprightly, may, and I really believe have, biassed my inclinations against the party for whom I was employed: -but then, I have really done nothing but by Mr. Duane's advice; and by his advice have allowed much more to my Lord than I ever believed he had a right to; and which, if he had behaved handsomely, and not been guided by Lucas, he would not have claimed, whatever his pretensions were.

I beg your pardon for dwelling so much on this tedious affair. You will soon, I trust, hear no more of it.

LETTER CCCCXVIII.

In

Berkeley Square, March 26, 1784. THE Dissolution of Parliament, a manœuvre so long upon the anvil, and so often intermitted, has at last taken place. The King went to the House on Wednesday, and in a few words declared his intention; a strange event interrupted the blow for a moment. the preceding night some thieves had broken into the Chancellor's house, and stolen the Great Seal! The hubbub it occasioned for some hours was prodigious; but, as forms and ceremonies are not quite so awful as before Time was arrived at years of discretion, a cast was taken off, and served for the death-warrant of the House of Commons last night. In truth, there does not seem to remain any terror in solemnity, when housebreakers make free with the head of the law himself. I doubt, that, for a month or six weeks to come, one shall have additional occasion to keep watch and ward. All the island will be a scene of riot, and probably of violence. The parties are not separated in gentle mood: there will, they say, be contested elections every where; consequently, vast expense and animosities. The Court, it is believed, will have the majority in the new Parliament. As your nephew does not intend to be of it, you will, I conclude, see him soon; but he is out of town, and I know nothing of him. I only write now just to mark the crisis, though tomorrow's papers would have notified the event; but you love, now and then to have the confirmation from me., I have not received from you that of the Pretender's death, though it has been public here this fortnight. I do not mean that I cared a straw about it; and perhaps you thought you had mentioned it. Does his brother. mean to encircle his hat with a diadem, like old King Henry of Portugal; or rather, more like the imaginary Charles the Tenth of France, the puppet of the League?

I have not only not heard from you on the part of Mozzi, but not a word from Sharpe; and therefore I conclude no answer is come. We have no private news at all. Indeed, politics are all in all. I question whether any woman intrigues with a man of a different party. Little girls say, "Pray, Miss, of which side are you?" I heard of one that said, "Mama and I cannot get Papa over to our side!"

The weather is as violent as our contests. Though the winter was so long and severe, we had snow two days ago, and have again to-day; yet our calamities are trifling to what we hear from the

* This proved to be erroneous. He had, however, been given over, and had received extreme unction.

† Cardinal Henry, uncle and successor of Don Sebastin.

The Cardinal of Bourbon, uncle of Henry IV. of France, proclaimed king by the name of Charles X. by the League, though a prisoner to his nephew; in which confinement he died.

VOL. II.-28

Continent from Germany, destruction of bridges by inundations; and still more dreadful from Holland. Well! politics and tempests are important in their day, and then sink into the mass of events, and lose their striking characteristics-the sufferings of individuals. I have lived so long, and have seen such a succession of both kinds of convulsions, that they make little more impression on me than the scenes of a play.

1

To the present drama, Elections, I shall totally shut my ears. Such subjects as, however noisy, one is sure to hear of no more the moment they are over, are to me insupportable. I hated elec tions forty years ago; and when I went to white's preferred a conversation on Newmarket to one on elections: for the language of the former I did not understand, and, consequently, did not listen to; the other, being uttered in common phrase, made me attend, whether I would or not. When such subjects are on the tapis, they make me a very insipid correspondent. One cannot talk of what one does not care about; and it would be jargon to you if I did: however, do not imagine but I allow a sufficient quantity of dulness to my time of life. I have kept up a correspondence with you with tolerable spirit for three and forty years together, without our once meeting. Can you wonder that my pen is worn to the stump? You see it does not abandon you; nor, though conscious of its own decay, endeavour to veil it by silence. The Archbishop of Gil Blas has long been a lesson to me to watch over my own ruins; but I do not extend that jealousy of vanity to commerce with an old friend. You knew me in my days of folly and riotous spirits; why should I hide my dotage from you, which is not equally my fault and reproach? I take due care that nobody should hear of me but two or three, who persuade me that I still live in their memories; by the rest I had rather be forgotten.

LETTER CCCCXIX.

Berkeley Square, March 30, 1784. As I expect your nephew in town previously to his setting out for Florence, and as his residence, I conclude from his having let his house in London, will be very short, I prepare a letter to send by him, lest I should not have time to write it leisurely when he comes, and is departing again instantly.

My letters, since the great change in the Administration, have been rare, and much less informing than they used to be. In a word, I was not at all glad of the Revolution, nor have the smallest connexion with the new occupants. There has been a good deal of boldness on both sides. Mr. Fox, convinced of the necessity of hardy measures to correct and save India, and coupling with that rough medicine a desire of confirming the power of himself and his allies, had formed

a great system, and a very sagacious one; so sagacious, that it struck France with terror. But as the new power was to be founded on the demolition of that nest of monsters, the East [India] Company, and their spawn of Nabobs, &c., they took the alarm, and the secret junto at Court rejoiced that they did. The Court struck the blow at the Ministers; but it was the gold of the Company that really conjured up the storm, and has diffused it all over England.*

On the other hand, Mr. Pitt has braved the majority of the House of Commons, has dissolved the existent one, and, I doubt, given a wound to that branch of the Legislature, which, if the tide does not turn, may be very fatal to the Constitution. The nation is intoxicated, and has poured in Addresses of Thanks to the Crown for exerting the prerogative against the palladium of the people. The first consequence will probably be that the Court will have a considerable majority upon the new elections. The country has acted with such precipitation, and with so little knowledge of the question, that I do not doubt but thousands of eyes will be opened and wonder at

"A bill for the regulation of the territorial government in India (the corruptions of which were notorious to all) was brought into Parliament in November 1783. Its leading provision was to vest the whole management of the affairs of the East-India Company in seven commissioners, named in the act, and of course appointed by the existing Ministry. It was warmly opposed by Pitt, on account of its being a violation of the chartered rights of the Company; it however passed the House of Commons by a great majority, and was introduced to the Lords. But in the mean time an alarm was raised respecting the inordinate power such a regulation would confer upon the Ministers, and which would render them almost independent of the Crown: and in a private audience given to Lord Temple by his Majesty, this danger was represented in such a light, that directions were sent to all the noblemen dependent on, or confidential with, the Court, to vote against the bill; and it was accordingly rejected. The immediate consequence was a change of Ministry; and in the new arrangement, Dec. 1783, Pitt united the posts of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and thus in his twenty-fourth year assumed the station of Prime Minister. But, although sup. ported by the choice of his Sovereign, he had a very powerful opposition to encounter in the House of Commons, and his first India bill was rejected. The extraordinary spectacle was now presented of a Minister standing opposed to the majority of the national representatives, and it was obvious that either he must give way, or Parliament be dissolved. After a long struggle, in which Pitt, almost unsupported, steadily resisted the call upon him to declare whether or no a dissolution was intended, that measure took place in March 1734, and a general election succeeded. On this occasion it appeared that the voice of the nation was decidedly in favour of the Minister; and he had the singular fortune of being supported, as well by the friends of royal prerogative, as by those of parliamentary independence. Some of the strongest aristocratical interests in the kingdom were defeated, and the new Parliament opened with a large majority on the ministerial side. Pitt was returned for the University of Cambridge. His first measure was the passing of his India bill with some alterations. Its essence was the constituting of a board of control, appointed by the King out of the Privy Council, for superintending the civil and military government and the revenue concerns of the Company, whilst their commercial and internal affairs were left under the management of their own directors. The King was to nominate a commander-in-chief, and to possess a negative upon all appointments of the Company; and a new court of judicature was instituted for the trial of offences committed in India."

themselves; but the mischief will be done! But, without talking of futurity and constitutional points, you may easily judge what detriment the nation must have received already. The first year after a war-and after a fatal war!-was the moment to set about repairing what could be repaired. That year is already lost, totally lost! not a measure has been taken yet; and it will be the end of May before even the session can begin. Unanimity, too, was essential; instead of which, behold two parties revived with as much animosity as ever actuated factions, except in religious wars! It was deemed of the last urgency that the East India Bill should have gone by the ships in February; not a bill is yet in the egg-shell. The Cabinet of Versailles speak their opinion plainly, by being zealous for Mr. Pitt; a sad compliment to him! And they are sending a powerful fleet to India, accompanied by Spaniards and Dutch. Guess how near we are to peace with Holland! Add to all these difficulties the incapacity of the new Ministers. Mr. Pitt is certainly an extraordinary young man; but is he a supernatural one? Do not trust to me, but believe the foreign Ministers. There is but one voice amongst them on the marvellous superiority of Mr. Fox, and the unheard-of facility of doing business with him. He made the peace between the Turks and Russia; and Simonin, the latter's Minister, told the king himself so in the drawing-room since Fox's fall. On the contrary, those foreigners talk loudly of the extreme ignorance of the new Secretaries. Our Ambassador at Paris is a proverb of insufficience. Lord Shelburne (who, by the way, seems likely to succeed one of his successors, Lord Sydney,) said the other day, "Upon my word, I hear that the Duke of Dorset's letters are written very well; he talks of the ceded islands as if he knew where they are."*

This is a brief sketch of part of our history; for particulars, I refer myself to your nephew. You, with whom I have conversed so freely for above forty years, could not want a clue to my sentiments on the present crisis. I never have changed my principles, nor am likely. I shall continue to write to you on great events, but without comments, which would be unnecessary after I have given you this key.

In a general view, I suppose we shall fall into all the distraction of a ruined country. The memory of what we have been so recently will exasperate our feelings; or we shall grow insensible, remain dissipated till totally impoverished, and perhaps imagine from indolence

*"For the embassy to Paris, the Duke of Dorset was selected by Pitt, or rather by the King. The Duke was the son of Lord John Sackville, elder brother of Lord George; and succeeded collaterally to the title, on the demise of his uncle Charles, second Duke of Dorset, mentioned so frequently in Dodington's Diary as Earl of Middlesex. The Duke, when named Ambassador to Versailles, had nearly attained his fortieth year. He displayed neither shining parts nor superior abilities; and, considered as Ambassador to France, could not sustain a comparison for diplomatic ability, or strength of intellect, with the Earl of Stair, or with the first Horace Walpole, brother of Sir Robert, who had represented the English Sovereign at the Courts of Louis the Fourteenth and Fifteenth."- Wraxall's Memoirs.