MY DEAR FRIEND: The Sons of Britain, like those of Noah, must cover their
parent’s shame as well as they can; for to retrieve its honor is now too
late. One would really think that our ministers and generals were all as
drunk as the Patriarch was. However, in your situation, you must not be
Cham; but spread your cloak over our disgrace, as far as it will go.
M----t calls aloud for a public trial; and in that, and that only, the
public agree with him. There will certainly be one, but of what kind is
not yet fixed. Some are for a parliamentary inquiry, others for a martial
one; neither will, in my opinion, discover the true secret; for a secret
there most unquestionably is. Why we stayed six whole days in the island
of Aix, mortal cannot imagine; which time the French employed, as it was
obvious they would, in assembling their troops in the neighborhood of
Rochfort, and making our attempt then really impracticable. The day after
we had taken the island of Aix, your friend, Colonel Wolf, publicly
offered to do the business with five hundred men and three ships only. In
all these complicated political machines there are so many wheels, that
it is always difficult, and sometimes im possible, to guess which of them
gives direction to the whole. Mr. Pitt is convinced that the principal
wheels, or, if you will, the spoke in his wheel, came from Stade. This is
certain, at least that M----t was the man of confidence with that person.
Whatever be the truth of the case, there is, to be sure, hitherto an
‘hiatus valde deflendus’.
The meeting of the parliament will certainly be very numerous, were it
only from curiosity: but the majority on the side of the Court will, I
dare say, be a great one. The people of the late Captain-general, however
inclined to oppose, will be obliged to concur. Their commissions, which
they have no desire to lose, will make them tractable; for those
gentlemen, though all men of honor, are of Sosia’s mind, ‘que le vrai
Amphitrion est celui ou l’on dine’. The Tories and the city have engaged
to support Pitt; the Whigs, the Duke of Newcastle; the independent and
the impartial, as you well know, are not worth mentioning. It is said
that the Duke intends to bring the affair of his Convention into
parliament, for his own justification; I can hardly believe it; as I
cannot conceive that transactions so merely electoral can be proper
objects of inquiry or deliberation for a British parliament; and,
therefore, should such a motion be made, I presume it will be immediately
quashed. By the commission lately given to Sir John Ligonier, of General
and Commander-in-chief of all his Majesty’s forces in Great Britain, the
door seems to be not only shut, but bolted, against his Royal Highness’s
return; and I have good reason to be convinced that that breach is
irreparable. The reports of changes in the Ministry, I am pretty sure,
are idle and groundless. The Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pitt really agree
very well; not, I presume, from any sentimental tenderness for each
other, but from a sense that it is their mutual interest: and, as the
late Captain-general’s party is now out of the question, I do not see
what should produce the least change.
The visit made lately to Berlin was, I dare say, neither a friendly nor
an inoffensive one. The Austrians always leave behind them pretty lasting
monuments of their visits, or rather visitations: not so much, I believe,
from their thirst of glory, as from their hunger of prey.
This winter, I take for granted, must produce a piece of some kind or
another; a bad one for us, no doubt, and yet perhaps better than we
should get the year after. I suppose the King of Prussia is negotiating
with France, and endeavoring by those means to get out of the scrape with
the loss only of Silesia, and perhaps Halberstadt, by way of
indemnification to Saxony; and, considering all circumstances, he would
be well off upon those terms. But then how is Sweden to be satisfied?
Will the Russians restore Memel? Will France have been at all this
expense ‘gratis’? Must there be no acquisition for them in Flanders? I
dare say they have stipulated something of that sort for themselves, by
the additional and secret treaty, which I know they made, last May, with
the Queen of Hungary. Must we give up whatever the French please to
desire in America, besides the cession of Minorca in perpetuity? I fear
we must, or else raise twelve millions more next year, to as little
purpose as we did this, and have consequently a worse peace afterward. I
turn my eyes away, as much as I can, from this miserable prospect; but,
as a citizen and member of society, it recurs to my imagination,
notwithstanding all my endeavors to banish it from my thoughts. I can do
myself nor my country no good; but I feel the wretched situation of both;
the state of the latter makes me better bear that of the former; and,
when I am called away from my station here, I shall think it rather (as
Cicero says of Crassus) ‘mors donata quam vita erepta’.
I have often desired, but in vain, the favor of being admitted into your
private apartment at, Hamburg, and of being informed of your private life
there. Your mornings, I hope and believe, are employed in business; but
give me an account of the remainder of the day, which I suppose is, and
ought to be, appropriated to amusements and pleasures. In what houses are
you domestic? Who are so in yours? In short, let me in, and do not be
denied to me.
Here I am, as usual, seeing few people, and hearing fewer; drinking the
waters regularly to a minute, and am something the better for them. I
read a great deal, and vary occasionally my dead company. I converse with
grave folios in the morning, while my head is clearest and my attention
strongest: I take up less severe quartos after dinner; and at night I
choose the mixed company and amusing chit-chat of octavos and duodecimos.
‘Ye tire parti de tout ce gue je puis’; that is my philosophy; and I
mitigate, as much as I can, my physical ills by diverting my attention to
other objects.
Here is a report that Admiral Holborne’s fleet is destroyed, in a manner,
by a storm: I hope it is not true, in the full extent of the report; but
I believe it has suffered. This would fill up the measure of our
misfortunes. Adieu.