STRAWBERRY HILL, _Aug._ 26, 1785.
Though I am delighted to see your handwriting, I beg you will indulge me
no more with it. It fatigues you, and that gives me more pain than your
letters can give me satisfaction. Dictate a few words on your health to
your secretary; it will suffice. I don't care a straw about the King and
Queen of Naples, nor whether they visit your little Great Duke and
Duchess. I am glad when monarchs are playing with one another, instead
of scratching: it is better they should be idle than mischievous. As I
desire you not to write, I cannot be alarmed at a strange hand.
Your philosophic account of yourself is worthy of you. Still, I am
convinced you are better than you seem to think. A cough is vexatious,
but in old persons is a great preservative. It is one of the forms in
which the gout appears, and exercises and clears the lungs. I know
actually two persons, no chickens, who are always very ill if they have
no annual cough. You may imagine that I have made observations in plenty
on the gout: yes, yes, I know its ways and its jesuitic evasions. I beg
its pardon, it is a better soul than it appears to be; it is we that
misuse it: if it does not appear with all its credentials, we take it
for something else, and attempt to cure it. Being a remedy, and not a
disease, it will not be cured; and it is better to let it have its way.
If it is content to act the personage of a cough, pray humour it: it
will prolong your life, if you do not contradict it and fling it
somewhere else.
The Administration has received a total defeat in Ireland, which has
probably saved us another civil war.[1] Don't wonder that I am
continually recollecting my father's _Quieta non movere_. I have never
seen that maxim violated with impunity. They say, that in town a change
in the Ministry is expected. I am not of that opinion; but, indeed,
nobody can be more ignorant than I. I see nobody here but people
attached to the Court, and who, however, know no more than I do; and if
I did see any of the other side, they would not be able to give me
better information; nor am I curious.
[Footnote 1: In the session of 1785 Grattan opposed a body of
"resolutions" calculated to relieve the distress of the Irish
manufacturers, and altogether to emancipate the trade and commerce of
Ireland from many mischievous restrictions which had hitherto restrained
their progress. Lord Stanhope, in his "Life of Pitt," i. 273, quotes a
description of Grattan's speech as "a display of perhaps the most
beautiful eloquence ever heard, but seditious and inflammatory to a
degree hardly credible;" and he so far prevailed, that in the Irish
House of Commons the resolutions were only carried by a majority of
twenty-nine--one so small, that the Duke of Rutland, the
Lord-Lieutenant, felt it safer to withdraw them.]
A stranger event than a revolution in politics has happened at Paris.
The Cardinal de Rohan is committed to the Bastile for forging the
Queen's hand to obtain a collar of diamonds;[1] I know no more of the
story: but, as he is very gallant, it is guessed (_here_ I mean) that it
was a present for some woman. These circumstances are little Apostolic,
and will not prop the falling Church of Rome. They used to forge
donations and decretals. This is a new manoeuvre. Nor were Cardinals
wont to be treated so cavalierly for peccadilloes. The House of Rohan is
under a cloud: his Eminence's cousin, the Prince of Guemené,[2] was
forced to fly, two or three years ago, for being the Prince of
Swindlers. _Our_ Nabobs are not treated so roughly; yet I doubt they
collect diamonds still more criminally.
[Footnote 1: "_A collar of diamonds._" The transaction here referred
to--though, strangely enough, it is looked on as one that had a
political interest--was, in fact, a scheme of a broken-down gambler to
swindle a jeweller out of a diamond necklace of great value. The Court
jeweller had collected a large number of unusually fine diamonds, which
he had made into a necklace, in the hope that the Queen would buy it,
and the Cardinal de Rohan, who was a member of one of the noblest
families in France, but a man of a character so notoriously profligate,
that, when he was ambassador at Vienna, Maria Teresa had insisted on his
recall, was mixed up in the fraud in a manner scarcely compatible with
ignorance of its character. He was brought to trial with the more
evident agents in the fraud, and the whole history of the French
Parliaments scarcely records any transaction more disgraceful than his
acquittal. For some months the affair continued to furnish pretext to
obscure libellers to calumniate the Queen with insinuations not less
offensive than dangerous from their vagueness; all such writers finding
a ready paymaster in the infamous Duc d'Orléans.]
[Footnote 2: The Prince de Guemenée, a very profligate and extravagant
man, by 1782 had become so hopelessly embarrassed that he was compelled
to leave Paris, and consequently the Princess, his wife, who ever since
the birth of Louis XVI. had held the office of "Governess of the Royal
Children," a life-appointment, was forced to resign it, much to the
pleasure of the Queen, who disapproved of her character, and bestowed
the office on Mme. de Polignac, and when, at the beginning of the
Revolution, she also fled from Paris, on Mme. de Tourzel. But, in truth,
under Marie Antoinette the office was almost a sinecure. She considered
superintendence of the education of her children as among the most
important of her duties; and how judiciously she performed it is seen in
an admirable letter of hers to Mme. de Tourzel, which can hardly be
surpassed for its discernment and good-feeling. (See the Editor's "Life
of Marie Antoinette," iii. 55.)]
Your nephew will be sorry to hear that the Duke of Montrose's third
grandson, Master William Douglas, died yesterday of a fever. These poor
Montroses are most unfortunate persons! They had the comfort this spring
of seeing Lord Graham marry: the Duchess said, "I thought I should die
of grief, and now I am ready to die of joy." Lady Graham soon proved
with child, but soon miscarried; and the Duke and Duchess may not live
to have the consolation of seeing an heir--for we must hope and make
visions to the last! _I_ am asking for samples of Ginori's porcelain at
sixty-eight! Well! are not heirs to great names and families as frail
foundations of happiness? and what signifies what baubles we pursue?
Philosophers make systems, and we simpletons collections: and we are as
wise as they--wiser perhaps, for we know that in a few years our
rarities will be dispersed at an auction; and they flatter themselves
that their reveries will be immortal, which has happened to no system
yet. A curiosity may rise in value; a system is exploded.
Such reflections are applicable to politics, and make me look on them as
equally nugatory. Last year Mr. Fox was burnt in effigy; now Mr. Pitt
is. Oh! my dear Sir, it is all a farce! On _this day_, about a hundred
years ago (look at my date), was born the wisest man I have seen.[1] He
kept this country in peace for twenty years, and it flourished
accordingly. He injured no man; was benevolent, good-humoured, and did
nothing but the common necessary business of the State. Yet was he
burnt in effigy too; and so traduced, that his name is not purified
yet!--Ask why his memory is not in veneration? You will be told, from
libels and trash, that he was _the Grand Corruptor_.--What! did he
corrupt the nation to make it happy, rich, and peaceable? Who was
oppressed during his administration? Those saints Bolingbroke and
Pulteney were kept out of the Paradise of the Court; ay, and the
Pretender was kept out and was kept quiet. Sir Robert fell: a Rebellion
ensued in four years, and the crown shook on the King's head. The
nation, too, which had been tolerably corrupted before his time, and
which, with all its experience and with its eyes opened, has not cured
itself of being corrupt, is not quite so prosperous as in the day of
that man, who, it seems, poisoned its morals. Formerly it was the most
virtuous nation on the earth!
[Footnote 1: He means his own father, the Prime Minister from 1720 to
1741.]
Under Henry VIII. and his children there was no persecution, no
fluctuation of religion: their Ministers shifted their faith four times,
and were sincere honest men! There was no servility, no flattery, no
contempt of the nation abroad, under James I. No tyranny under Charles
I. and Laud; no factions, no civil war! Charles II., however, brought
back all the virtues and morality, which, somehow or other, were
missing! His brother's was a still more blessed reign, though in a
different way! King William was disturbed and distressed by no
contending factions, and did not endeavour to bribe them to let him
pursue his great object of humbling France! The Duke of Marlborough was
not overborne in a similar and more glorious career by a detestable
Cabal!--and if Oxford and Bolingbroke did remove him, from the most
patriot motives, they, good men! used no corruption! Twelve Peerages
showered at once, to convert the House of Lords, were no bribes; nor was
a shilling issued for secret services; nor would a member of either
House have received it!
Sir R. Walpole came, and strange to tell, found the whole Parliament,
and every Parliament, at least a great majority of every Parliament,
ready to take his money. For what?--to undo their country!--which,
however, wickedly as he meant, and ready as they were to concur, he left
in every respect in the condition he found it, except in being improved
in trade, wealth, and tranquillity; till _its friends_ who expelled him,
had dipped their poor country in a war; which was far from mending its
condition. Sir Robert died, foretelling a rebellion, which happened in
less than six months, and for predicting which he had been ridiculed:
and in detestation of a maxim ascribed to him by his enemies, that
_every man has his price_, the tariff of every Parliament since has been
as well known as the price of beef and mutton; and the universal
electors, who cry out against that traffic, are not a jot less vendible
than their electors.--Was not Sir Robert Walpole an abominable Minister?
_29th._
P.S.--The man who certainly provoked Ireland _to think_, is dead--Lord
Sackville.[1]
[Footnote 1: Lord George Sackville Germaine, third son of Lionel [first]
Duke of Dorset, who, when secretary to his father, when Lord-Lieutenant
of Ireland, gave rise, by his haughty behaviour, to the factions that
have ever since disturbed that country, and at last shaken off its
submission to this country.--WALPOLE.]
_30th._
I see, by the _Gazette_, that Lord Cowper's pinchbeck principality is
allowed. I wonder his Highness does not desire the Pope to make one of
his sons a bishop _in partibus infidelium_.
_BREVITY OF MODERN ADDRESSES--THE OLD DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH._