How Lord Chatham will frown when they meet! for, since I began my letter, the papers say that Maurepas is dead. The Duc de Nivernois, it is said, is likely to succeed him as Minister; which is probable, as they were brothers-in-law and friends, and the one would naturally recommend the other. Perhaps, not for long, as the Queen's influence gains ground.
[Footnote 1: The capitulation of Burgoyne at Saratoga has been mentioned in a previous letter; and in October, 1781, Lord Cornwallis, whose army was reduced to seven thousand men, was induced to surrender to Washington, who, with eighteen thousand, had blockaded him at a village called Yorktown; and it was the news of this disaster which at last compelled the King to consent to relinquish the war.]
[Footnote 2: "Forty millions." Burke, in one of his speeches, asserted the expense to have been £70,000,000, "besides one hundred thousand men.">[
The warmth in the House of Commons is prodigiously rekindled; but Lord Cornwallis's fate has cost the Administration no ground there. The names of most éclat in the Opposition are two names to which those walls have been much accustomed at the same period—CHARLES FOX and WILLIAM PITT, second son of Lord Chatham.[1] Eloquence is the only one of our brilliant qualities that does not seem to have degenerated rapidly—but I shall leave debates to your nephew, now an ear-witness: I could only re-echo newspapers. Is it not another odd coincidence of events, that while the father Laurens is prisoner to Lord Cornwallis as Constable of the Tower, the son Laurens signed the capitulation by which Lord Cornwallis became prisoner? It is said too, I don't know if truly, that this capitulation and that of Saratoga were signed on the same anniversary. These are certainly the speculations of an idle man, and the more trifling when one considers the moment. But alas! what would my most grave speculations avail? From the hour that fatal egg, the Stamp Act, was laid, I disliked it and all the vipers hatched from it. I now hear many curse it, who fed the vermin with poisonous weeds. Yet the guilty and the innocent rue it equally hitherto! I would not answer for what is to come! Seven years of miscarriages may sour the sweetest tempers, and the most sweetened. Oh! where is the Dove with the olive-branch? Long ago I told you that you and I might not live to see an end of the American war. It is very near its end indeed now—its consequences are far from a conclusion. In some respects, they are commencing a new date, which will reach far beyond us. I desire not to pry into that book of futurity. Could I finish my course in peace—but one must take the chequered scenes of life as they come. What signifies whether the elements are serene or turbulent, when a private old man slips away? What has he and the world's concerns to do with one another? He may sigh for his country, and babble about it; but he might as well sit quiet and read or tell old stories; the past is as important to him as the future.
[Footnote 1: Charles Fox and William Pitt were the second sons of the first Lord Holland and the first Lord Chatham, Fox being by some years the older. They were both men of great eloquence; but in this (as in every other point) Pitt was the superior, even by the confession of Lord Macaulay. As Prime Minister from 1783 to 1801, and afterwards in 1804-5, Pitt proved himself the greatest statesman, the man more in advance of his age than any of his predecessors or successors; while Fox's career was for the most part one of an opposition so rancorous, and so destitute of all patriotism, that he even exulted over the disasters of Burgoyne and Cornwallis, and afterwards over the defeat of the Austrians at Marengo in 1800, avowedly because the Austrians were our allies, and it was a heavy blow to Pitt and his policy.]
Dec. 3.
I had not sealed my letter, as it cannot set out till to-morrow; and since I wrote it I have received yours, of the 20th of November, by your courier.
I congratulate you on the success of your attempts, and admire the heroic refusal of the General.[1] I shall certainly obey you, and not mention it. Indeed, it would not easily be believed here, where as many pence are irresistible….
[Footnote 1: General the Hon. James Murray was governor of Minorca,
which was besieged by the Spaniards, and was offered a vast bribe by the
Duc de Crillon, the commander of the besiegers, to give up Port St.
Philip.]
Don't trouble yourself about the third set of "Galuzzi." They are to be had here now, and those for whom I intended them can buy them. I have not made so much progress as I intended, and have not yet quite finished the second volume. I detest Cosmo the Great. I am sorry, either that he was so able a man, or so successful a man. When tyrants are great men they should miscarry; if they are fools, they will miscarry of course. Pray, is there any picture of Camilla Martelli, Cosmo's last wife? I had never heard of her. The dolt, his son, I find used her ill, and then did the same thing. Our friend, Bianca Capello, it seems, was a worthless creature. I don't expect much entertainment but from the Life of Ferdinand the Great. It is true I have dipped into the others, particularly into the story of Cosmo the Third's wife, of whom I had read much in French Mémoires; and into that of John Gaston, which was so fresh when I was at Florence; but as the author, in spite of the Great Duke's injunctions, has tried to palliate some of the worst imputations on Cosmo and his son Ferdinand, so he has been mighty modest about the Caprean amours of John Gaston and his eldest brother. Adieu! I have been writing a volume here myself. Pray remember to answer me about Camilla Martelli.