former. Our situation, however, is far from admirable; and fallen we are very low in every respect-nay, have no symptoms of a nation returning to its senses, and thinking of repairing its errors and recovering its consideration. Mr. Fox, I am persuaded, had he full authority, is most capable of undertaking such a task; as, of all men living, Lord Shelburne has shown himself the most insufficient. Every day of his administration produced new proofs of his folly, duplicity, indiscretion, contradictions, and disregard of all principles. He was fallen into the lowest contempt, even before his power was shaken. He will have full time to reflect on his errors; and yet hitherto he has seemed insensible of them, and incapable of correcting them. The Duke of Portland is a cypher. Lord North has lately shown himself a dexterous politician for his own interests, though a most fatal Minister to us, and uncreditable to himself, and not very grateful to his Master. Still, such was our blindness, he was the most popular man in England, even after his fall; but that vision is dispelled, and he will be seen hereafter in his true colours, as a bad minister and a selfish man, who had abilities enough to have made a very different figure. Adieu! March 18th. P.S. I have been telling you what may be true; but at least it is not so yet. The Administration that was thought settled, is not. The Duke of Portland was invited, and refused in the same breath; that is, was ordered to send his list in writing, and would not: and, lest any part should be in the right, he and his new friend Lord North are not agreed on their list; and yet they and their Sovereign have squabbled about part of that unsettled list. He has insisted on keeping the Chancellor, they on dismissing him. Why? oh! thereby hangs a tale, more serious than all the rest. George the Fourth* has linked himself with Charles Fox. The Chancellor was consulted (by the King,) and is said to have expressed himself in terms that would be treason, if the present tense were the future ;† but, that I may not be in the same præmunire, I leave to your nephew to expound the rest by word of mouth. I expect every minute to receive my packet. This letter, I hope, and he, will give you a clue that may make you understand my future despatches, which will be circumspect, not so much against home inspection as foreign. We are in such a distracted state, and may continue so, that I shall avoid touching on our confusions more than shall be too notorious to be concealed. As to who are or shall be Ministers, I care very little. All parties are confounded and intermixed, without being reconciled. My belief is, that new distractions will arise, and, after some scene of anarchy, a new æra. You may depend upon it, that I shall have nothing to do with it; and consequently shall know nothing but outlines. I withdraw myself *The Prince of Wales. His connexion with Charles Fox made the King detest the latter, and was the principal cause of his dislike to the proposed Administration. That is, if the Prince were King. more and more from the world, have few connexions left, and despise supremely such old simpletons as thrust themselves amongst generations two or three degree younger. If one outlives one's contemporaries, it is no reason for supposing one shall cut a new set of teeth. LETTER CCCXCIX. Thursday, April 3, 1783. I MARK the very day of the week on which I begin my letter, because of late nothing has proved true; at least, not lasting for fourand-twenty hours. For these three weeks I have said to every body that called on me and told me news, "I beg your pardon, but I will not believe any thing you tell me all I can do is to disbelieve." Well! at last there is an Administration-it has kissed hands; and therefore, were it to be destroyed to-morrow, it will have been. In a word, Lord North was sent for once more on Tuesday night, and was ordered to tell the Duke of Portland, that his Grace's arrangement would be accepted. Accordingly, the new Cabinet kissed. hands yesterday: the Duke of Portland, as First Lord of the Treasury; Lord John Cavendish, Chancellor of the Exchequer ; Lord Stormont, President of the council; Lord North and Mr. Fox, Secretaries of State; Lord Carlisle, Privy Seal; Lord Keppel, First Lord of the Admiralty. This is all I know yet: for reports, even crediting, I should not repeat them till they have taken seisin; as, on a change of Administration, places, like insects, undergo a variety of transformations, at least in the eyes of rumour, before the metamorphoses are completed. As my letter will not leave London till to-morrow, I may be able to tell you more.. I sent you a key by your nephew, which will unlock much of what is past. In the mean time, let us talk of Cavalier Mozzi. I have received your letter, with his enclosed to Mr. Duane; which I sent immediately, and have seen the letter this morning. He is to appoint Mr. Sharpe and Lucas to meet him here, if they can, on Monday or Tuesday next; and when we have heard all they have to say, MrDuane and I shall talk it over together, and I hope give a more favourable decision than Cavalier Mozzi is willing to submit to. Since Mozzi has so long delayed coming, I see no occasion for it now. Indeed, the walls of Florence seems impassable, or your principie'd Earl would not have been riveted there so long. How strange he is! neither parent nor children can draw him from that specific spot! But we are a lunatic nation!: They tell us that the Sicilian and Neapolitan tragedy has not been * Earl Cowper, made Prince Nassau by the Emperor. He had lately sent his children to England to be educated, yet did not follow them himself. so very dreadful as at first represented. I hope my friend, the Professor of Earthquakes, Sir William Hamilton, will give a full account of it, and not treat it with your Pope's indifference. Mr. Fox is again your principal, and a very agreeable one he will be: there is no walk in which he will not shine. Friday, 4th. The Duke of Richmond resigned yesterday. Of new preferments, to-day produced but the following: Burke, Paymaster; Spanish Charles Townshend, Treasurer of the Navy; Eden, Vice-treasurer of Ireland; Lord Surrey, Frederick Montagu, and Sir Grey Cooper, Lords of the Treasury; and John Townshend, of the Admiralty. These are nothing to you, but your nephew will like to know. I tell you none of the Who-are-to-be's, to save myself the trouble of contradiction, if I should misinform you.* I believe some of your earthquake weather has reached hither; for it has been so warm for these five days, that, on opening my window to the Square this morning, I found a large wasp on the outside, which soon flew away. Adieu! LETTER CCCC. Berkeley Square, April 30, 1783. I FEAR poor Cavalier Mozzi will not find himself much advanced, though Mr. Duane and I have made a beginning. He might as well have a suit in Chancery, if we go no faster than we have done. We sat the first morning near four hours, and then could proceed no further, for a point of law being started, upon which it was necessary to take the opinion of counsel; which Sharpe took down to state to two of the first lawyers. All our three said we should obtain that opinion immediately; and immediately has already lasted above three weeks, and I have not heard a word from my fellow-labourers. * On the 2nd of April, after repeated impediments and interruptions, which strongly marked the reluctance of the King in acceding to the arrangement, the Coalition Administration was announced, consisting of the Duke of Portland, First Lord of the Treasury; Lord North and Mr. Fox, Principal Secretaries of State; Lord John Cavendish, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Keppel, First Lord of the Admiralty; Viscount Stormont, President of the Council; the Earl of Carlisle, Lord Privy Seal. The above seven formed the Cabinet. The Great Seal was put into commission: the Commissioners being Lord Loughborough, Sir W. H. Ashurst, and Sir Beaumont Hotham. The Earl of Hertford, Lord Chamberlain; Viscount Townshend, Master-General of the Ordnance; the Hon. Richard Fitzpatrick, Secretary at War; Edmund Burke, Esq., Paymaster of the forces; Charles Townshend, Esq., Treasurer of the Navy; James Wallace, Esq., Attorney-General; John Lee, Esq., Solicitor General; Richard Brindsley Sheridan, Esq., and Richard Burke, Esq., Secretaries to the Treasury; the Earl of Northington, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; William Windham, Esq., Secretary for Ireland; and William Eden, Esq., Vice-Treasurer.-ED. Between Easter and Newmarket, politics have been a little at a stand: there had been vivacities in both Houses, but no division in either. The heat of the war seems likely to lie in that of the Lords. The newspapers specify the preferments: the one most difficult to be filled, the Vice-royalty of Ireland, is at last supplied by Lord Northington. Mr. Windham, whom you saw lately in Italy, is his Secretary. Mr. Trevor, second son of Lord Hampden, who has been employed in Germany, is to be your neighbour at Turin. There seems to be a little suspense in Lord Mountstewart's destination to Madrid. The French Ambassador, D'Ademar, is expected incessantly, for the Duke of Manchester is gone to Paris. It is well these articles are connected with your vocation, or they would not be worth noting: but I have nothing more material to tell you. After a war, and so many changes of Administrations, it might be natural to repose a little; but perhaps we may not be arrived at a settlement yet.* When you wrote last, your nephew was not arrived at Florence; but I conclude he was before your letter had made ten posts: for he travels as fast as your own couriers. I shall grudge your having him for one particular day in next week; when Mr. Pitt is to move for the alteration of the Representation, against which your nephew is as zealous as I am. It will probably not be carried; but I wish it knocked on the head by as many blows as possible. Our Constitution has resisted all kinds of shocks; but, if it changes itself, who can foresee the consequence? We have lost our grandeur! I hope our felicity is not to follow it! It is a disinterested wish, as most of mine are; for the progress of revolutions to come will scarcely enter into the volume in which I am concerned. The newspapers intimate that you were in the right, when you judged that the two ambitious Imperialst were determined to treat the Turkish empire as they did Poland, and share it between them: it seems, no submissions have diverted them from their purpose; on the contrary, I suppose, have encouraged them. Formerly an Emperor and Empress, with no more religion than these two, would have christened it a holy war; modern rapine is more barefaced. Our Nabobs do not plunder the Indies under the banners of piety, like the old Spaniards and Portuguese. I call man an aurivorous animal. We pretend just now to condemn our own excesses, which are shocking indeed; sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? a Parliament is a fine court of correction. The Lord Advocate of Scotland, who has sold himself over and over, is prosecuting Sir Thomas Rumbold for corruption at Madras! This Rumbold was a waiter at white's: there are two or three of the like origin, who have returned to Bengal incrusted with gold and diamonds. This trial has disclosed a scene of tyranny *This proved a prophecy: the new Administration did not last above nine months. Austria and Russia. Henry Dundas, Esq. who, on the coalition between Mr. Fox and Lord North, had gone over to the side of Pitt. in the East India Company itself as royalty iniquitous as could issue from the Council-chamber of Petersburgh. We talk and write of liberty, and plunder the property of the Indies. The Emperor destroys convents, and humbles the Pope; the Czarina preaches toleration, but protects the Jesuits; and these two philosophic sovereigns intend to divide Constantinople, after sacrificing half a million of lives! In one age, religion commits massacres; in another, philosophy. Oh! what a farce are human affairs!. LETTER CCCCI. Thursday morning early, May 8th, 1783. I WRITE, though I wrote but last week, and rather to gratify your nephew than you. Mr. William Pitt's motion for Reform of the House of Commons was rejected at past two this morning by 293 to 149.* I know no particulars yet, but from a hasty account in a *On the 7th of May, Mr. Pitt again brought the question of Parliamentary Reform before the House of commons: upon which occasion there was a call of the House, and at four o'clock nearly five hundred members had taken their places. After a most eloquent speech, Mr. Pitt moved three resolutions:-1. "That the most effectual and practicable measures ought to be taken for the better prevention of bribery and expense at future elections. 2. That, for the future, when the majority of voters for any borough should be convicted of gross and notorious corruption before a committee of that House, such boroughs should be disfranchised, and the minority of voters, not so convicted, should be entitled to vote for the county in which such borough should be situated. 3. That an addition of knights of the shire, and of representatives of the metropolis, should be added to the state of the representation." "The gallery of the House," writes Sir Samuel Romilly," was quite full at a little after eleven, and three times as many as it would hold were obliged to come away. One might imagine, from this crowding, that a great many persons took concern in the fate of their country: but the truth is, that it was the eloquence of Mr. Pitt, and not the subject on which it was to be employed, that excited people's curiosity; and, no doubt, the reflection which his speech produced in the minds of many of his hearers was not unlike that which the usurer makes upon the preacher in the Diable Boiteux, Il a bien fait son métier; allons faire le nôtre. In his speech, Mr. Pitt said, that the addition he would propose should be of about one hundred members. He spoke of a perfectly equal representation as a wild Utopian scheme, which never could be realized; and gave as a reason for not proposing to strike off the corrupt boroughs and those which are the patrimony of particular families, that it would be an unjust invasion of private property. This is a kind of argument which I confess, has no great weight with me; for I think the Jaws are not bound to protect men in the possession of such pecuniary advantages as they ought never to have obtained. If a man's having a pecuniary interest in a thing, no matter how acquired, is sufficient to make his property in it sacred, then may the laws become a shield to every species of fraud, iniquity, and immorality." Mr. Thomas Pitt and Mr. Dundas both declared themselves proselytes to the plan for rendering the representation more extended. Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan, while they sustained the proposition, treated with derision Mr. Thomas Pitt's surrender of the borough of Old Sarum at the shrine of the British Constitution. “If we reflect," says Wraxall, “on the close degree of consanguinity between William and Thomas Pitt, we may perhaps be inclined to think that the latter relied on |