The Habeas Corpus is finished, but only for this year. Lord Temple threatened to renew it the next; on which Lord Hardwicke took the party of proposing to order the judges to prepare a bill for extending the power of granting the writ in vacation to all the judges. This prevented a division; though Lord Temple, who protested alone t'other day, had a flaming protest ready, which was to have been signed by near thirty. They sat last night till past nine. Lord Mansfield spoke admirably for two hours and twenty-five minutes. Except Lord Ravensworth and the Duke of Newcastle, whose meaning the first never knows himself, and the latter's nobody else, all who spoke spoke well: they were Lord Temple, Lord Talbot, Lord Bruce, and Lord Stanhope, for; Lord Morten, Lord Hardwicke, and Lord Mansfield, against the bill.(890) T'other day in our House, we had Lady Ferrars' affair: her sister was heard, and Lord Westmoreland, who had a seat within the bar. Mr. Fox opposed the settlement; but it passed.
The Duke of Grafton has resigned. Norborne Berkeley has converted a party of pleasure into a campaign, and is gone with the expedition,(891) without a shirt but what he had on, and what is lent him. The night he sailed he had invited women to supper. Besides him, and those you know, is a Mr. Sylvester Smith. Every body was asking, "But who is Sylvester Smith?" Harry Townshend replied, "Why, he is the son of Delaval, who was the son of Lowther, who was the son of Armitage, who was the son of Downe."(892)
The fleet sailed on Thursday morning. I don't know why, but the persuasion is that they will land on this side Ushant, and that we shall hear some events by Tuesday or Wednesday. Some believe that Lord Anson and Howe have different destinations. Rochfort, where there are twenty thousand men, is said positively not to be the place. the King says there are eighty thousand men and three marshals in Normandy and Bretagne. George Selwyn asked General Campbell, if the ministry had yet told the King the object?
Mademoiselle de l'Enclos is arrived,(893) to my supreme felicity. I cannot say very handsome or agreeable: but I had been prepared on the article of her charms. I don't say, like Henry VIII. of Anne of Cleves, that she is a Flanders mare, though to be sure she Is rather large: on the contrary, I bear it as well as ever prince did who was married by proxy-and she does not find me fricass`e dans de la neige."(894) Adieu!
P. S. I forgot to tell you of another galanterie I have had, -a portrait of Queen Elizabeth left here while I was out of town. The servant said it was a present, but he had orders not to say from whom.
(890) Lord Bute thus bewails the fate of the bill, in a letter to Mr. Pitt of the same day: "What a terrible proof was Friday, in the House of Lords, of the total loss of public spirit, and the most supreme indifference to those valuable rights, for the obtaining which our ancestors freely risked both life and fortune! These are dreadful clouds that hang over the future accession, and damp the hopes I should otherwise entertain of that important day." Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. p. 317.-E.
(891) The expedition against St. Maloes.
(892) All these gentlemen had been volunteers on successive expeditions to the coast of France.
(893) The portrait of ninon de l'Enclos.
(894) Madame de S`evign`e, in her letters to her daughter, reports that Ninon thus expressed herself relative to her son, the Marquis de Sevign`e, who was one of her lovers.