employment, pension, or favour, beyond what I now enjoy by the gift of my father alone. I have more than I can pretend to deserve; and beg your Lordship, in whose incorruptible integrity I have the firmest confidence, to produce this testimony, under my own hand, if ever I deviate from what I here profess. And I will flatter myself, that if your Lordship should hear me suspected, from not signing any petition, of having swerved from my principles, you will do me the justice to defend me from that imputation. My character cannot be safer than in your Lordship's hands, and in them I beg leave to deposit it;-for, as next to the imputation of being mercenary, I dread the charge of vanity, I entreat that this letter may not be made public. I am of too little consequence to give myself airs of clearing my conduct before it is censured; and am so obscure a man, that I may never be mentioned; and therefore, I will certainly not thrust myself upon the public from self-conceit and with an unnecessary parade, which I despise.

Allow me the honour of choosing your Lordship for my confessor, and with leaving my conscience in your trust. I am ready, with the utmost submission to the laws of my country, to take my fate with others in whatever shall be decided. I ask no favour or partiality, and am entitled to none; I have no merits to plead ;-but I cannot think it would become me to be at once a petitioner and a party petitioned against.

I have the honour to be, with the highest esteem, my Lord, your Lordship's most obedient humble servant,

TO THE REV. W. MASON.

HOR. WALPOLE.

1780.

You must blame yourself, not me, if you are displeased with my letters, which you forced from me. I had done all I could, both by silence, and by more than once or twice declaring I did not choose to write on politics, to avoid any political discussions with you. I could not be ignorant of Lord Harcourt's conversion, which for a moment had so much diverted the town, but I did not take the liberty to mention it to him. On the contrary, when he consulted me on going to Court, which I knew he had determined to do, on being offered the embassy to Spain, I told him I thought civility ought to be returned by respect. Neither was I quite ignorant of your change of sentiments; yet should never have uttered a syllable to you on that occasion, had you not chosen to notify it to me. Then I most certainly had an equal right to declare that my principles were not changed, especially not by a circumstance, serious indeed in itself, but ludicrous if it had produced such an effect on me as to make me

think the power of the Crown was diminished, was diminishing, and ought to be increased, because its (not secret, but open) influence had been used to force Lords of the Bed-chamber, and even the holy heads of our Church, to sacrifice his conscience, duty and opinion to his gratitude, an example that tells me how much I have been in the right never to involve myself in such terrible obligations! Ought did not become

you or me.

I am so far from being hurt at your quarrelling with me, that I thank you extremely for it, and still so cordially wish you whatever you may wish for yourself, that I should delight in seeing you Archbishop of York; for as you are excellent at distinctions, you can certainly discern the difference between an Archbishop and a Bishop, as easily as between a King and his crown. I am, sir, with due regard and esteem,

Your most obedient, humble servant,

H. W.

I HAVE for five and forty years acted upon the principles of the constitution, as it was settled at the Revolution, the best form of government that I know of in the world, and which made us a free people, a rich people, and a victorious people, by diffusing liberty, protecting property, and encouraging commerce; and by the combination of all, empowering us to resist the ambition of the House of Bourbon, and to place ourselves on a level with that formidable neighbour. The narrow plan of Royalty, which had so often preferred the aggrandizement of the Crown to the dignity of presiding over a great and puissant free kingdom, threw away one predominant source of our potency by aspiring to enslave America, and would now compensate for the blunder and its consequences by assuming a despotic power at home. It has found a tool in the light and juvenile son of the great Minister who carried our glory to its highest pitch. But it shall never have the insignificant approbation of an old and worn-out son of another Minister, who, though less brilliantly, maintained this country in the enjoyment of the twenty happiest years that England ever enjoyed. Your pert and ignorant Cabal at York, picking up factious slander from party libels, stigmatized that excellent man as the patron of corruption, though all his views and all his notions tended to nothing but to preserve the present family on the throne, and the nation in peace and affluence. Your own blind ambition of being the head of a party, which had no precise system in view, has made you embrace every partial sound which you took for popularity; and being enraged at every man who would not be dictated to by your crude visions, you have floundered into a thousand absurdities; and, though you set out with pretending to reform Parliament, in order to lower the influence of the Crown, you have plunged into the most preprosperous support of prerogative, because Lord North, then

the Crown Minister, declared against your innovations, and has since fallen into disgrace with the King. I am not so little rooted in my principles as to imitate or co-operate with you. I am going out of the world, and am determined to die as I have lived-consistent. You are not much younger than I am, and ought to have acted a more temperate and rational part ;-but that is no business of mine.

TO THE DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER.

Thursday, March 13th, 1783.

YOUR Royal Highness may be surprised, madam, that after announcing the fall of Lord Shelburne, I should not have told you who was his successor. I had more reasons than one, like the Mayor of Orleans; though that one were sufficient, viz. his having no successor till yesterday. I know Lord Cholmondeley had written to the Duke; and in truth I did not care to tell foreign post-offices, though no secret, the confusion we were in. I had rather any body should publish our disgraces than I. Nay, I should perhaps have sent false news, for several appointments of Premiers were believed each for a day, and proved false the next. The post was certainly offered to and declined by young Mr. Pitt, to Lord North, Lord Gower, and, it was said, to Lord Thurlow. At last, after a vacancy of seventeen days, Lord North was summoned yesterday, and ordered to make his posed arrangement; in consequence of which the Duke of Portland was sent for next, and is First Lord of the Treasury. I have not yet heard the other changes or dispositions, but suppose we shall know the principal before this shall set out to-morrow.

There have been cart-loads of abuse, satiric prints, and some little humour on the coalition of Lord North and Mr. Fox; nor has Lord Shelburne been spared before or since his exit. It is remarkable that the counties and towns are addressing thanks for the peace, which their representatives have condemned. George Selwyn has been happiest, as usual, in his bons-mots. He calls Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt the Idle and Industrious Apprentices. It is a coarser and much poorer piece of wit, I don't know whose, that the Duke of Portland is a fit block to hang Whigs on. You have seen in the papers, madam, the new peerages and pensions, and therefore I do not mention them. I very likely repeat what you hear from your daughters and others, but what can I tell but what every body knows?

My aunt Lady Walpole is dead, and they say has left but little, and that little to her two daughters. Mr. Skrine has shot himself, it is supposed, from excruciating illnesses. Old Lady Jerningham is recovering from a most violent palsy. General Conway has had as

violent a St. Anthony's fire, but is well again. I will reserve the rest of my paper for new promotions.

I never deal in scandal, madam, but one may make use of it as an antidote to itself. You must have seen in the papers much gross abuse on a pretty ingenious friend of mine for a low amour with one of her own servants, for which I seriously believe there was not the smallest foundation. The charge is now removed to much higher quarters, which at least are more creditable. The town has for these ten days affirmed that the Lord husband was going to cite into the Spiritual Court the head of the Temporal one-nay, and the third chief of the Common Law-nay, and the second of the Spiritual one too. Such conquests would be very honourable in the records of love, and the first very diverting, as the hero has so much distinguished himself by severity on bills of divorce. I do not warrant any of these stories, but totally discredit that of the domestic. A prude may begin with a footman, and a gallant woman may end with one, but a pretty woman, who has so many slaves in high life, does not think of a livery, especially where vanity is the principal ingredient in her composition.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Berkeley Square, March 13th, 1783.

I Do not know whether this letter will not be still shorter than my last; but your nephew sets out next week, and will give you full details of the interlude, for it is now finished. Lord North received command yesterday to form a new Administration according to his own proposal, of which he is not to be the chief, but the Duke of Portland. I have not yet heard the other arrangements, for the interministerium, which had lasted seventeen days, ceased but yesterday morning, and was not divulged till the evening.

We shall now, I hope, have a settlement for some time-I mean it is necessary to the country. To me revolutions are but a scene that passes like so many others to which I have been witness, and in which I am concerned but as one of the people. I do not forget how soon I am to leave the theatre even as a spectator. I rejoice in the peace as a happy denouement of one tragedy. What is to follow I trust will only be a comedy (like those of other pacific periods,) as politics are in my eyes when not bloodied by war.

Friday, 14th.

I believe I shall not be able to send you the new litany to night: it had not received the imprimatur yesterday, as there must be two responses to adjust, for those who are to be dismissed, From our enemies defend us, O Lord! and for the candidates who are to succeed

them, We beseech the to hear us. The town, who never takes so much time to deliberate, disposed the whole arrangement in a moment, though every editor gave different readings. I shall give you neither the one nor the other, as most may be apocryphal, but wait for the genuine edition in usum Delphini.

We have received the dreadful accounts of the devastation of Messina, &c. I say no more, for I could only detail the commonplace reflexions that present themselves on such calamities!