STRAWBERRY HILL, _June_ 9, 1768.
To send you empty paragraphs when you expect and want news is
tantalising, is it not? Pray agree with me, and then you will allow that
I have acted very kindly in not writing till I had something to tell
you. _Something_, of course, means Wilkes, for everything is nothing
except the theme of the day. There has appeared a violent _North
Briton_, addressed to, and written against Lord Mansfield, threatening a
rebellion if he continued to persecute Mr. Wilkes. This paper, they say,
Wilkes owned to the Chevalier de Chastelux, a French gentleman, who went
to see him in the King's Bench, and who knew him at Paris. A rebellion
threatened in print is not very terrible. However, it was said that the
paper was outrageous enough to furnish the Law with every handle it
could want. But modern mountains do not degenerate from their ancestors;
their issue are still mice. You know, too, that this agrees with my
system, that this is an age of abortions. Prosecutions were ordered
against the publishers and vendors, and there, I suppose, it will end.
Yesterday was fixed for the appearance of Wilkes in Westminster Hall.
The Judges went down by nine in the morning, but the mob had done
breakfast still sooner, and was there before them; and as Judges stuffed
out with dignity and lamb-skins are not absolute sprites, they had much
ado to glide through the crowd. Wilkes's counsel argued against the
outlawry, and then Lord Mansfield, in a speech of an hour and a half,
set it aside; not on _their_ reasons, but on grounds which he had
discovered in it himself. I think they say it was on some flaw in the
Christian name of the county, which should not have been _Middlesex to
wit_,--but I protest I don't know, for I am here alone, and picked up my
intelligence as I walked in our meadows by the river. You, who may be
walking by the Arno, will, perhaps, think there was some timidity in
this; but the depths of the Law are wonderful! So pray don't make any
rash conclusions, but stay till you get better information.
Well! now he is gone to prison again,--I mean Wilkes; and on Tuesday he
is to return to receive sentence on the old guilt of writing, as the
Scotch would _not_ call it, _the_ 45,[1] though they call the rebellion
so. The sentence may be imprisonment, fine, or pillory; but as I am
still near the Thames, I do not think the latter will be chosen. Oh! but
stay, he may plead against the indictment, and should there be an
improper _Middlesex to wit_ in that too, why then in that case, you
know, he did _not_ write _the_ 45, and then he is as white as milk, and
as free as air, and as good a member of Parliament as if he had never
been expelled. In short, my dear Sir, I am trying to explain to you
what I literally do not understand; all I do know is, that Mr. Cooke,
the other member for Middlesex, is just dead, and that we are going to
have another Middlesex election, which is very unpleasant to me, who
hate mobs so near as Brentford. Sergeant Glynn, Wilkes's counsel, is the
candidate, and I suppose the only one in the present humour of the
people, who will care to have his brains dashed out, in order to sit in
Parliament. In truth, this enthusiasm is confined to the very mob or
little higher, and does not extend beyond the County. All other riots
are ceased, except the little civil war between the sailors and
coal-heavers, in which two or three lives are lost every week.
[Footnote 1: "_The_ 45" here serves for the Scotch rebellion of 1745,
and for No. 45 of the _North Briton_.]
What is most disagreeable, even the Emperor of Morocco has taken courage
on these tumults, and has dared to mutiny for increase of wages, like
our journeymen tailors. France is pert too, and gives herself airs in
the Mediterranean. Our Paolists were violent for support of Corsica, but
I think they are a little startled on a report that the hero Paoli is
like other patriots, and is gone to Versailles, for a peerage and
pension. I was told to-day that at London there are murmurs of a war. I
shall be sorry if it prove so. Deaths! suspense, say victory;--how end
all our victories? In debts and a wretched peace! Mad world, in the
individual or the aggregate!
Well! say I to myself, and what is all this to me? Have not I done with
that world? Am not I here at peace, unconnected with Courts and
Ministries, and indifferent who is Minister? What is a war in Europe to
me more than a war between the Turkish and Persian Emperors? True; yet
self-love makes one love the nation one belongs to, and vanity makes one
wish to have that nation glorious. Well! I have seen it so; I have seen
its conquests spread farther than Roman eagles thought there was land. I
have seen too the Pretender at Derby; and, therefore, you must know that
I am content with historic seeing, and wish Fame and History would be
quiet and content without entertaining me with any more sights. We were
down at Derby, we were up at both Indies; I have no curiosity for any
intermediate sights.
Your brother was with me just before I came out of town, and spoke of
you with great kindness, and accused himself of not writing to you, but
protested it was from not knowing what to say to you about the Riband. I
engaged to write for him, so you must take this letter as from him too.
I hope there will be no war for some hero to take your honours out of
your mouth, sword in hand. The first question I shall ask when I go to
town will be, how my Lord Chatham does? I shall mind his health more
than the stocks. The least symptom of a war will certainly cure him.
Adieu! my dear Sir.
_THE ENGLISH CLIMATE._