They talk of sending the Queen to the Convent of Val de Grace for the present; and the report is, they mean to try her. The King is to undergo an interrogatory on Tuesday; and on the result of that, it is supposed he is to be deposed, and the Dauphin declared King, with a Council of Regency. These, as you will see, are all reports; but the melancholy certainty is, that neither in Paris, nor in any part of the country which we have heard of, does there seem the least disposition to pity, and much less to assist them.
We have the bad news, that the Austrian Plenipotentiaries have left Sistovo; but, as they express it, without breaking up the Congress. The armistice is not renewed; but it seems as if it would be continued by a sort of tacit consent. You will have seen in the papers the further demands made by the Emperor, on which the business has stopped.
Ever yours,
G.
The Queen's behaviour is said to have been admirable.
Early in this year, Ministers had moved and carried an Address from His Majesty, reporting the failure of his negotiations to bring about a peace between Russia and Turkey, and desiring to augment his naval forces for the sake of giving more weight to his interposition. This Address was vehemently, but unsuccessfully, opposed in both Houses, on the ground that such a course was calculated to lead to hostilities, and plunge the nation into an unnecessary expenditure. Advantage was taken of the occasion to make it appear that Mr. Pitt wanted to involve the country in the war, and that his policy was essentially injurious to the industry and material welfare of the people. The following interesting passage from a letter of Lord Grenville's, dated the 17th of August, not only disproves the imputation, but shows how anxious Ministers were to secure peace, how much they were relieved and gratified by its accomplishment, and to what a height of prosperity they had succeeded in bringing the commerce and revenue of the kingdom.
We received this morning the account that the negotiations at Sistovo are at last satisfactorily concluded. A definitive treaty of peace, on the grounds of the status quo strict, was to be signed on the 4th of this month, under the mediation of the Allies; and at the same time a separate Act, by which the Austrians and Turks treat as powers between whom peace is already concluded (and consequently without mediation) for some such arrangements of frontier, and the settlement of a dispute about Old Orsova, which town is to remain in the hands of Austria. You may suppose this event gives me no small satisfaction; and I hope I shall now begin to breathe a little, which I have hardly done since April last. You can hardly form to yourself an idea of the labour I have gone through; but I am repaid by the maintenance of peace, which is all this country has to desire. We shall now, I hope, for a very long period indeed enjoy this blessing, and cultivate a situation of prosperity unexampled in our history. The state of our commerce, our revenue, and, above all, that of our public funds, is such as to hold out ideas which but a few years ago would indeed have appeared visionary, and which there is now every hope of realizing.
The next letter refers to a matter of personal interest. A Rangership had fallen vacant by the death of Lord Orford, and it appeared desirable to Lord Grenville to effect an exchange between that office and the reversion he held of the Chief Remembrancership in Ireland. Upon all questions of this nature, as indeed on all questions that directly affected himself and his own objects, Lord Grenville was always reluctant to decide until he had first consulted Lord Buckingham, in whose judgment and affection he reposed unbounded confidence.
LORD GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
St. James's Square, Dec. 7th, 1791.
My dear Brother,
I mentioned to you last week, that there was a subject I wished to talk with you about; but as my getting down to Stowe seems to grow every day more and more uncertain, and as the subject in question is now brought to a point, I am obliged to write to you upon it; though I cannot so easily say all I wish upon it in this manner. It is, shortly, to ask your advice whether, in consequence of Lord Orford's death, I should not exchange my reversion of Lord Cl.'s office, for the immediate appointment to the Rangership, which I apprehend it is clearly in the King's power to grant for life. The different reasons, pro and con, will as readily suggest themselves to you as to me. The great points to be gained by the exchange are, first, the certainty of some provision, instead of an expectancy, which I may never live to enjoy; and what is still more than that, the great advantage of having that provision in this country, instead of looking for it in Ireland, subject to the chance of what injustice party may be able to do in Ireland, which they could not do here, and subject, also, to the general chance of troubles in that country, which I fear are too probable. Against this, is to be set some difference (as I believe) in the value of the two offices, though I have not yet been able to ascertain it; and the degree of invidiousness and clamour which my receiving any new favour (for such this would undoubtedly be considered) would be subject to, especially at a moment when Government are rather under difficulties, and when I must expect so many competitors, for a thing in many respects so desirable.