In order to enable you to be as prudent as patriotic, I sign this letter, and therein give you my address, that for the maintenance of your own veracity you may furnish me with the means of convicting publickly those slanderers who have dared to make use of my name, in a manner still more repugnant to real facts, than the dignity with which I have ever supported my character.
I have the honour of being your most humble servant,
The Chevalier D’Eon.
In Petty France, Westminster.
To Charles-Genevieve-Louis-Auguste-Andre-Timothee D’Eon de Beaumont, Chevalier de l’ordre roial & militaire de S. Louis,[1] Ministre Plenipotentiare de France aupres du Roi de la Grande Bretagne, Captaine de Dragons au service de sa Majeste tres Chretienne, Avocat au Parlement de Paris, Censeur roial pour l’Histoire et les Belles Lettres en France, &c.
LETTER I.
SIR,
I have read with particular attention your letter to Dr. Musgrave, and can no longer be in doubt what your business at present is in a country where you are an outlaw.
You exhibit to us a character most singularly profligate. You alone in this age have had it in your power to be equally false and treacherous to two such great nations as England and France. While you were only secretary to the Duke of Nivernois, you abused the privileges of your character, and engaged in the dirty business of debauching our manufacturers. You so entirely forgot the dignity of your rank afterwards, when Minister Plenipotentiary, that you continued the same practice, although it is contrary to the law of nations. You do not even blush to charge this article of expence in the state of your disbursements to the Comte de Guerchy. “Avance aux ouvriers Anglois de la manufacture de toiles peintes, tant hommes que femmes, debauche par le Sieur L’Escalier a Londres et des environs pour les faire passer ailleurs 195l.” Lettres, Memoires, &c. p. 172. The meanness and rascality of such an employment in you and Monsieur L’Escalier can only be equalled by the tameness and ignominy of the administration at that time in suffering L’Escalier, a notorious pimp and an outlaw here, to be after this in the public character of Secretary of the Comte de Guerchy. The attestations of L’Escalier’s outlawry were printed here, witnessed by Solomon Schomberg, a Notary Public, and by the Lord Mayor. They were dispersed at the Hague, to serve the purpose of shewing at a certain juncture that England was bullied by France. You afterwards quarrelled with all your best friends, as well as with the ministers of your fortune, and your own Court, which had raised you so rapidly from nothing, from being a writer to the police at Paris on the pension of 600 livres, or 25 guineas a year, to the dignity of Minister Plenipotentiary at the most important Court in Europe. Modern times scarcely produce an instance of political treachery equal to your’s in printing the secrets of the Court by whom you were employed, and the private letters of your benefactor the Duke of Nivernois, of Monsieur Sainte-Foy, Monsieur Moreau, &c. Your particular quarrel with Guerchy had nothing to do with the sentiments of the Duke of Nivernois, of Mess. Sainte-Foy, Moreau, and other gentlemen, on the conduct of the French parliament, the administration of their finances, &c. which were intrusted to you, as their private friend, under the seal of secrecy. You betrayed their confidence without the least provocation on their part, or a pretence of justification of your own conduct from any one circumstance in those letters. After quarrelling with almost all your own countrymen, you published in the same volume a gross abuse of this nation, and called the English a parcel of fools and madmen, at the very time that this country afforded you an honourable protection, and an hospitality you have abused. “Apres deux secousses de tremblement de terre, qui arriverent ici en 1750, un soldat enthousiaste s’avisa d’en predire un troisieme, qui devoit renverser Londres. Il se dit inspire, & d’un ton enthousiaste en fixa le jour, l’heure, & la minute. Londres consterne au souvenir des deux secousses qui s’etoient suivies dans l’intervalle d’un mois, & plus effraie encore a l’approache d’un troisieme & plus terrible tremblement que ce soldat enthousiaste avoit annonce pour le 5 d’Avril, la ville s’est montree susceptible de toutes sortes d’impressions. Plus de 50 mille habitans, sur la foi de cet oracle, avoient ce jour-la pris la fuite: la plupart de ceux que les raisonnemens ou les raillerie de leurs amis avoient retenue, attendoient en tremblant l’instant critique, & n’ont montre de courage qu’apres qu’il a ete passe. Le jour arrive, la prophetie, semblable a la plupart des predictions, ne fut point accomplie; le faux Samuel fut mis un peu tard aux petites maisons & la tete de ces fiers insulaires si senses & si philosophes ne fut pas a l’epreuve de la prophetie d’un fou.” P. 14. I believe there is not to be found so gross and silly an abuse of a whole nation for the weakness of a few hysteric women, and superannuated men, nor so false a representation of any fact. Were your other dispatches to your court, Sir, composed of such wretched stuff as this? I hope the bottle-conjurer finds his place in the second part of your memoires. That innocent joke of the late Duke of Montague, your countrymen generally talk and write of as a serious proof of the folly and credulity of this nation. The English laughed at your weak attack on them as a nation, and superior to such abuse, desired that you might continue to enjoy the protection of their noble system of laws, and the privileges of their country. They considered their own glory, not the worthlessness of the individual. They would have parted with so insignificant a wretch as you without the least regret; but they would not suffer you to be forced away, nor kidnapped, merely because it would have been an outrage to their laws, and the honour of their nation. They too, as politicians, thought you might be induced to make some discoveries, and were ready to profit by your treason to your own country in the secrets you might reveal for the benefit of their’s, but at the same time they would have abhorred the traitor. When I mention the English nation as anxious for your safety, I mean the body of the people. The administration at that time wished that you might be carried off to France. Mansfield and Norton saw Guerchy often on the occasion, and Sandwich signed more than one warrant to apprehend you. The French ministry, and the people here in power at that time, planned your destruction; but the generosity of two or three individuals saved you, and preserved a viper in the bosom of their country. Now is just the season for such noxious reptiles to come forth. They always meet the approaching storm. Leagued with the enemies of our country, whether French or English, your slender abilities are still employed against a nation you hate, but in your heart honour and revere. After having for some years talked very openly of the wonderful discoveries you could make, and the impeachment you could support, after frequently declaring, that you had two heads in your pocket, when a worthy gentleman steps forth and states the charge, you at once recoil, and declare that you do not even believe a word of it, but think that l’Angleterre a plutot donne de l’argent a la France, que la France de l’or a l’Angleterre pour conclure la derniere paix. So absurd an idea I shall not undertake to refute, because I believe you are the only man at large, who entertains it; but I shall in this first address to you, desire you to state two facts to the public, relative to the subject of your letter to Dr. Musgrave. The first is, What was the negociation relative to the island of Porto-Rico? The Duke of Bedford set out for Paris, Sept. 5, 1762. Every thing of importance was soon entirely settled between the two courts. The most material arrangements had been made here in private with Lord Bute before his Grace’s departure. The news of the taking the Havannah was afterwards first received in England, while the Duke was in Paris, on Sept. 29. Now I ask what alteration in the terms of the treaty did such important intelligence produce? What was to be given England, additional to the former stipulations, in consequence of the surrender of the Havannah, when that likewise was to be given up? You are called upon to state that transaction; what you know of the ten days cession of Porto Rico to us by the negociation at Paris, and the subsequent surrender of that island on the receipt of two letters from hence, one of which the Duke of Bedford ought to produce for his justification in that part of the business; the other is too sacred to appear. The second question I shall now ask is, whether you have not declared that you were offered 7000 louis for your papers? Your letter to Dr. Musgrave is extremely evasive on this head. You say, “Je me suis toujours flatte de l’estime & de l’amitie des Anglois avec lesquels j’ai vecu. Qui d’eux dans ces sentimens auroit ose me temoigner assez de mepris pour me faire une pareille proposition?” No, Sir, no Englishman was employed in so dirty a business; but one of your own country was found to make the proposition, to which you objected. You said the sum was too trifling for papers of such importance. My other letters shall give the world more truths; for I will drag you forth to the public view, not merely as a trifling Frenchman, trifling in every thing serious, and serious only in trifles, but as the enemy of England, as a pensioned tool of a wicked ministry, who hope by your means to trifle or perplex an enquiry, which may not stop at your patron, the detested Thane, to whom, although a Frenchman, you have sacrificed the great Sully in the most fulsome and lying of all dedications, prefixed to your pirated Considerations Historiques & Politiques sur les Impos.