BLACKHEATH, July 11, 1766.
MY DEAR FRIEND: You are a happy mortal, to have your time thus employed
between the great and the fair; I hope you do the honors of your country
to the latter. The Emperor, by your account, seems to be very well for an
emperor; who, by being above the other monarchs in Europe, may justly be
supposed to have had a proportionably worse education. I find, by your
account of him, that he has been trained up to homicide, the only science
in which princes are ever instructed; and with good reason, as their
greatness and glory singly depend upon the numbers of their
fellow-creatures which their ambition exterminates. If a sovereign
should, by great accident, deviate into moderation, justice, and
clemency, what a contemptible figure would he make in the catalogue of
princes! I have always owned a great regard for King Log. From the
interview at Torgaw, between the two monarchs, they will be either a
great deal better or worse together; but I think rather the latter; for
our namesake, Philip de Co mines, observes, that he never knew any good
come from l’abouchement des Rois. The King of Prussia will exert all his
perspicacity to analyze his Imperial Majesty; and I would bet upon the
one head of his black eagle, against the two heads of the Austrian eagle;
though two heads are said, proverbially, to be better than one. I wish I
had the direction of both the monarchs, and they should, together with
some of their allies, take Lorraine and Alsace from France. You will call
me ‘l’Abbe de St. Pierre’; but I only say what I wish; whereas he thought
everything that he wished practicable.
Now to come home. Here are great bustles at Court, and a great change of
persons is certainly very near. You will ask me, perhaps, who is to be
out, and who is to be in? To which I answer, I do not know. My conjecture
is that, be the new settlement what it will, Mr. Pitt will be at the head
of it. If he is, I presume, ‘qu’il aura mis de l’eau dans son vin par
rapport a Mylord B-----; when that shall come to be known, as known it
certainly will soon be, he may bid adieu to his popularity. A minister,
as minister, is very apt to be the object of public dislike; and a
favorite, as favorite, still more so. If any event of this kind happens,
which (if it happens at all) I conjecture will be some time next week,
you shall hear further from me.
I will follow your advice, and be as well as I can next winter, though I
know I shall never be free from my flying rheumatic pains, as long as I
live; but whether that will be more or less, is extremely indifferent to
me; in either case, God bless you!