words as I can use, it solicits peace with the States of America: it haggles on no terms; it acknowledges the Congress, or any body that pleases to treat; it confesses errors, misinformation, ill-success, and impossibility of conquest; it disclaims taxation, desires commerce, hopes for assistance, allows the independence of America, not verbally, yet virtually, and suspends hostilities till June 1779. It does a little more: not verbally, but virtually it confesses that the Opposition have been in the right from the beginning to the end.*

The warmest American cannot deny but these gracious condescensions are ample enough to content that whole continent; and yet, my friend, such accommodating facility had one defect,-it came too late. The treaty between the high and mighty States and France is signed; and, instead of peace, we must expect war with the high allies. The French army is come to the coast, and their officers here are recalled.

The House of Commons embrace the plan, and voted it, nemine contradicente. It is to pass both Houses with a rapidity that will do every thing but over take time past. All the world is in astonishment. As my letter will not set out till the day after to-morrow, I shall have time to tell you better what is thought of this amazing step.

Feb. 20.

In sooth I cannot tell you what is thought. Nobody knows what to think. To leap at once from an obstinacy of four years to a total concession of every thing; to stoop so low, without hopes of being

without a single mark of approbation to any part, from any description of men, or any particular man in the House. Astonishment, dejection, and fear overclouded the whole assembly. Although the Minister had declared, that the sentiments he expressed that day had been those which he always entertained, it is certain that few or none had understood him in that manner; and he had been represented to the nation at large, as the person in it the most tenacious of those parliamentary rights which he now resigned, and the most remote from the submissions which he now proposed to make. It was generally, therefore, concluded, that something more extraordinary and alarming had happened than yet appeared, which was of force to produce such an apparent change in measures, principles, and arguments."-ED.

Gibbon, in a letter written on the same day to Mr. Holroyd, says,-" Opposition, after expressing their doubts whether the lance of Achilles could cure the wound which it had inflicted, could not refuse their assent to the principles of conduct which they themselves had always recommended. I do not find that the world, that is, a few people whom I happen to converse with, are much inclined to praise Lord North's ductibility of temper. In the service of next Friday you will, however, take notice of the injunction given by the Liturgy: And all the people shall say after the Minister, Turn us again, O Lord, and so shall we be turned."-ED.

The Marquis of Granby, in a letter to Lord Chatham, of the same date, states, that"in the course of the debate Mr. Fox informed the House, that a report strongly obtained, that within ten days France had actually signed a treaty with the Americans, acknowledging their independence, and entering into an alliance with them: the Ministers remained totally silent, until Sir George Saville pressed the question to Lord North in so direct and positive a manner, that at last he confessed that he had received the same intelligence, though not officially, and that therefore he could neither affirm nor deny the authority of the account.'"-ED.

forgiven-who can understand such a transformation? I must leave you in all your wonderment; for the cloud is not dispersed. When it shall be, I doubt it will discover no serene prospect! All that remains certain is, that America is not only lost, but given up. We must no longer give ourselves Continental airs! I fear even our trident will find it has lost a considerable prong.

I have lived long, but never saw such a day as last Tuesday! From the first, I augured ill of this American war; yet do not suppose that I boast of my penetration. Far was I from expecting such a conclusion! Conclusion!-y sommes nous ? Acts of Parliament have made a war, but cannot repeal one. They have provoked-not terrified; and Washington and Gates have respected the Speaker's mace no more than Oliver Cromwell did.

You shall hear as events arise. I disclaim all sagacity, and pretend to no foresight. It is not an Englishman's talent. Even the second-sight of the Scots has proved a little purblind.

Have you heard that Voltaire is actually in Paris ?* Perhaps soon you will learn French news earlier than I can.

What scenes my letters to you have touched on for eight-andthirty years! I arrived here at the eve of the termination of my father's happy reign. The Rebellion, as he foresaw, followed; and much disgrace. Another war ensued, with new disgraces. And then broke forth Lord Chatham's sun; and all was glory and extensive empire. Nor tranquillity nor triumph are our lot now! The womb of time is not with child of a mouse,-but adieu! I shall probably write again before you have digested half the meditations . this letter will have conjured up.

LETTER CCLXXX.

Arlington Street, March 5, 1778. YOUR letter, may dear sir, which I received two days ago, is dated the 7th of last month; and you there speak with great distrust of seeing Lady Lucy again. I fear your forebodings were too well founded; for it is said here that she is actually dead. I had heard so ten days ago, but flattered myself that it was not true. Now I see it mentioned in the papers. As you only just knew her enough to love and lament her, I am sorry you ever did see her! Your

* Madame du Deffand had written to Walpole on the 10th-" Voltaire arrived here yesterday, at four in the afternoon, with his niece Madame Denis. I wrote him a short note, to which he has returned this answer :- J' arrive mort, et je ne veux ressusciter que pour me jetter aux genoux de Madame la Marquise du Deffand.'"-ED.

Lady Lucy Mann died in Italy, on the 7th of January.

nephew will feel the loss of so amiable a woman; and yet it is better for him that it is over; as he was only witness to her decay, and perpetually tortured with fears and doubts. His behaviour his exceedingly honourable to him, and discovers a true Mann's heart,unluckily, to make that expressfon just. it is necessary to double the I have talked to you philosophically on the vanity of being attached to the continuation of families; yet it is so natural, and I am so susceptible of that vanity, that I look forward to your nephew's marrying again, and having an heir to Linton.

1.

You will have been impatient for the consequences of Lord North's Conciliatory Plan. The substantial consequences cannot, you are sensible, be known till the Commissioners arrive in America,* and return the answer of the Congress; unless their departure is anticipated by some strong declaration of France in their favour, and which would render a treaty hopeless: many expect such a notification immediately. I am grown such a skeptic, that I believe nothing

*The three Commissioners appointed to treat of the means of quieting the disorders in America, were the Earl of Carlisle, Mr. Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland, and Governor George Johnstone. They left England in April, in the ship Trident. In a letter written "from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean," to his friend George Selwyn, Lord Carlisle gives the following graphic description of the situation of the Commissioners: "This is the first of May; but alas! we have no chimneysweepers and garlands; no milk-maids dancing before us! We have no music but the winds, and nothing seems inclined to dance but our vessel. Sea-sickness is, I flatter myself, got the better of. Conceive our dinner, and judge of our comforts. To keep ourselves close to the table, it is necessary to hold by the legs, and by so doing you must abandon your plate, which perhaps is flung, by the violence of the ship's motion, either into your own or your neighbour's lap. The conveyance of a glass to your mouth is no easy matter; but it requires infinite dexterity in the servant, and some good fortune, to bring it to you. Notwithstanding all this, I was able to attend dinner the second day, though it blew hard; and am now so little affected by the rolling of the ship, that I hardly know when I am reading, whether there is any motion or not. Such a child of habit is man! Close confinement must have its moments of melancholy. A walk after supper upon deck, the dashing of the sea, the noise of the winds, send me sometimes to bed, with thoughts which would not be productive of rest, unless they were got the better of by a little resolution. You will allow the contrast is strong between my present situation and that I was in some days ago. You know the wife and children that I have torn myself from, and I need say no more upon this subject."-See Selwyn Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 279. Frederick Howard, fifth Earl of Carlisle, the writer of the characteristic letter above quoted, was the only son of Henry, fifth Earl, by Isabella, daughter of William, fifth Lord Byron. In 1770, he had married Lady Carolina, daughter of Granville Leveson Gower, first Marquis of Stafford. In 1798, on the death of the fifth Lord Byron, he was appointed guardian of the great Poet; who, under the impression that his relation had intentionally slighted him, published some sarcasms upon him in his juvenile poems, which he afterwards regretted, and thus alludes to in the third canto of Childe Harold, in adverting to the melancholy fate of the Hon. Frederick Howard, the Earl's youngest son, one of those who fell gloriously at Waterloo

"Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps than mine;

Yet one I would select from that proud throng,

Partly because they blend me with his line,

And partly that I did his Sire some wrong.”—ED.

but facts past. The Bills met no obstruction in the House of Commons. They are to-day before the Lords; where I suppose they will experience comments rather than impediments. The intended pacification is not very popular, yet at most produces low murmurs. The nation has leaped from outrageous war to a most humiliating suppli cation for peace, with as little emotion as one passes in an ague from a shivering fit to a burning one; though I think in the inverted order, for I never had an ague. Methinks the patient's being so little affected by the sudden transition looks as if its constitution had contracted the insensibility of dotage. Every week may produce an era; yet I think nothing very important will happen yet. France has patience in one sense of the word, and we in another; and therefore we shall bear as long as they forbear. They best know what term they have set to their inactivity; my whole wisdom consists in abstaining from conjectures. Penetration is a fine thing; a genius now and then looks into futurity; but all I know is, that I have no such talent, nor believe much in those who pretend to it. My old face, like the one of Janus, only looks back; the young one may look forward to what will belong to it, and youth is apt to think it sees far: but age is as often mistaken, when it takes its experience for spectacles; they magnify the dim eye that looks through them, more than the objects they look to.

I will certainly mention you at our little Court, when they return to town. At present they are gone to the Duke's lodge in the New Forest for change of air. Indeed, it seems very difficult for his Royal Highness to find a situation that suits him. Heats destroy him, and damps are as bad. He caught cold above a month ago, had a violent cough, and the asthma frightfully since. It is a terrifying disorder to see; yet I am much easier when he suffers under it, than when the humour falls on his bowels. If he does not mend in the Forest, they will make a voyage to Bordeaux for some weeks for the benefit of the sea-air, and return when the great heats reign. Mrs. Haywood has been dying of a fever-so have many persons. Sir Thomas Hesketh died at once the night before last-but has long been dying.*

The principality of Auverquerquet is a sort of Iricism. King William would not allow the Lords Rochford and Grantham, as they were illegitimate branches from Prince Maurice and Prince Henry Frederic, to take the name of Nassau, but obliged them to bear those of Zulestein and Auverquerque; after his death they assumed that of Nassau. The Duke of Marlborough never preferred the principality of Mindleheim to his duchy: surely an English peerage with substantial privilege in one's own country is more dignified than a nominal principality in another; when it is transferred to a third country, it

This is one of Walpole's smartisms, and means, that though Sir Thomas had long been dying, his death was sudden and unexpected.-B.

Lord Cowper, being made a prince of the Empire, had a mind to have that title; his mother being one of the daughters and co-heiresses of Lord Grantham.

is still more ridiculous. I wonder Mademoiselle Pitt does not beg the Pope to create her Princess Fossani. I knew a foreigner at Paris who had a madness of wearing the orders of different countries. He was forbidden to assume the Saint Esprit, but indulged in every other knighthood. I have seen him at the theatres by turns Knight of the Garter, Bath, Thistle, Elephant, &c. &c. We had once a mad Queen Elizabeth here, who on the first day of the session, as my father was coming down from St. James's, gave him her speech and ordered him to read it to her Parliament;-it was not Mrs. Pitt, I assure you, nor Lady Mary Coke.

Strawberry Hill, 10th.

It looks very much now as if the war would very soon make itself. A French squadron is sailed westward, and Captain Digby has been despatched with another in pursuit of it.* Seamen are not apt to be so formal and dilatory as plenipotentiaries. The passions too begin to awaken. The City grows moody again; the Stocks fall; the Ministers are warmly pressed in both Houses. The new loan of six millions does not take kindly. The bended knee to America does not please. Dr. Franklin boasts that Philadelphia will be starved into a Burgoynism. Lord Temple seems to snuff confusion and is come forth again, and spoke against the conciliatory bills. Last year he entrapped John the Painter; I suppose he solves these inconsistencies by constancy to self. In that light, how uniform has his whole life. been; though every brother and every friend has been sacrificed to his passions! I, who sit aloof from the conflict, see these things as they are; and should behold them with indifference, if the general want of principle were not a worse ihdication of approaching ruin than the concomitant circumstances. All men see a prospect of rising on confusion: no man reflects that want of virtue cannot correct what the want of it has occasioned. Adieu!

LETTER CCLXXXI.

March 17, 1778.

I HAVE scarce a moment's time to write, and it is only-what an only! -to tell you that the French Ambassador notified to Lord Weymouth on Friday, that his Court had concluded a treaty of commerce and amity with the independent States of America; but had had the at

* It appears, by a letter from Dr. Franklin, dated Passy, February 21, that several American ships, loaded with stores for the Congress, were about to sail under the convoy of a French squadron.-ED.

† Lord Temple is stated, in a letter from Mr. Vaughan to Dr. Franklin, to have "reprobated the concessions, and equally the mad, foolish ministers, who could neither keep peace, make war, nor negotiate peace again: he wanted a treaty without Parliament, and preliminaries settled before concession."-ED.

VOL. II.-6