ARLINGTON STREET, _Oct._ 26, 1777.
It is past my usual period of writing to you; which would not have
happened but from an uncommon, and indeed, considering the moment, an
extraordinary dearth of matter. I could have done nothing but describe
suspense, and every newspaper told you that. Still we know nothing
certain of the state of affairs in America; the very existence where, of
the Howes, is a mystery. The General is said to have beaten Washington,
Clinton to have repulsed three attacks, and Burgoyne[1] to be beaten.
The second alone is credited. Impatience is very high, and uneasiness
increases with every day. There is no sanguine face anywhere, but many
alarmed ones. The pains taken, by circulating false reports, to keep up
some confidence, only increase the dissatisfaction by disappointing.
Some advantage gained may put off clamour for some months: but I think,
the longer it is suspended, the more terrible it will be; and how the
war should end but in ruin, I am not wise enough to conjecture. France
suspends the blow, to make it more inevitable. She has suffered us to
undo ourselves: will she allow us time to recover? We have begged her
indulgence in the first: will she grant the second prayer?...
[Footnote 1: In June and July General Burgoyne, a man of some literary
as well as military celebrity, achieved some trifling successes over the
colonial army, alternating, however, with some defeats. He took
Ticonderoga, but one of his divisions was defeated with heavy loss at
Bennington--a disaster which, Lord Stanhope says, exercised a fatal
influence over the rest of the campaign; and finally, a week before this
letter was written, he and all his army were so hemmed in at Saratoga,
that they were compelled to lay down their arms--a disgrace which was
the turning-point of the war, and which is compared by Lord Stanhope to
the capitulation of his own ancestor at Brihuega in the war of the
Spanish Succession. The surrender of Saratoga was the event which
determined the French and Spaniards to recognise the independence of the
colonies, and consequently to unite with them in the war against
England.]
You have heard of the inundation at Petersburg. That ill wind produced
luck to somebody. As the Empress had not distressed objects enough among
her own people to gratify her humanity, she turned the torrent of her
bounty towards that unhappy relict the Duchess of Kingston, and ordered
her Admiralty to take particular care of the marvellous yacht that bore
Messalina and her fortune. Pray mind that I bestow the latter Empress's
name on the Duchess, only because she married a second husband in the
lifetime of the first. Amongst other benevolences, the Czarina lent her
Grace a courier to despatch to England--I suppose to acquaint Lord
Bristol that he is not a widower. That courier brought a letter from a
friend to Dr. Hunter, with the following anecdote. Her Imperial Majesty
proposed to her brother of China to lay waste a large district that
separates their two empires, lest it should, as it has been on the point
of doing, produce war between them; the two empires being at the two
extremities of the world, not being distance enough to keep the peace.
The ill-bred Tartar sent no answer to so humane a project. On the
contrary, he dispersed a letter to the Russian people, in which he tells
them that a woman--he might have said the Minerva of the French
_literati_--had proposed to him to extirpate all the inhabitants of a
certain region belonging to him, but that he knew better what to do with
his own country: however, he could but wonder that the people of all the
Russias should still submit to be governed by a creature that had
assassinated her husband.--Oh! if she had pulled the Ottoman by the nose
in the midst of Constantinople, as she intended to do, this savage would
have been more civilised. I doubt the same rude monarch is still on the
throne, who would not suffer Prince Czernichew to enter his territories,
when sent to notify her Majesty's _hereditary_ succession to her
husband; but bade him be told, he would not receive an ambassador from a
murderess. Is it not shocking that the law of nations, and the law of
politeness, should not yet have abrogated the laws of justice and
good-sense in a nation reckoned so civilised as the Chinese? What an age
do we live in, if there is still a country where the Crown does not take
away all defects! Good night!
_DEATH OF LORD CHATHAM--THURLOW BECOMES LORD CHANCELLOR._