1st March, 1800.—Within these last ten or twelve days Mrs. Beauclerk and Mrs. Smith have each added their individual contributions to the population of the world: a little Mimi, and a still smaller boy are the production.
COMTE D’ARTOIS
Tierney told me of a circumstance which had been conveyed to him from authority. At one of the dinners given by the Comte d’Artois to Pitt and the Cabinet Ministers, the Cte. expressed his astonishment and indignation to Pitt, that a man possessing such principles as Mr. Tierney does, and uttering all that his turbulent and discontented disposition gives rise to, was allowed to go about; that such a man in a well-regulated Governt. should be confined, and not allowed to be at large to preach politics. Pitt replied that Mr. Tierney was a member of Parliament, a very loyal subject, and respectable in his private character. This was said drily, and intended as a reproof to a very ill-judged question. Nothing could show a greater want of taste and knowledge of English customs, than to abuse a member of Parliament to the Prime Minister of England, and tho’ I would not detract from Mr. Pitt, yet his defence of Tierney was such as the occasion extorted, and ought to have been made for any man in Parliament who has not outraged the laws. Even Sir Francis Burdett is as yet entitled to a similar justification. The Cte. d’Artois (at present, according to the ancien régime, Monsieur) is a man of slender abilities with violent passions; before the Revolution he was weak and volatile, he is now weak and revengeful.
Bonaparte gives fresh proofs every day of his talents for governing, both in his disposition to conciliate and resist. He has issued letters to recall most of the emigrant nobles who have not borne arms against their country, infants, women, and priests; he manifests a strong determination to fight as well as he did formerly, and not allow of anything being wrested from the nation.
There is upon record a very curious fact, that well considered might abate the ardour of those who are disposed to fight on for the Restoration ‘of the line of Hereditary Princes,’ as it shows that that event would not in all probability induce France to fall back within her ancient limits—one of the objects proposed by the restoration of ye Bourbons. Upon the restoration of Charles II., the Spaniards applied to the English Court for the surrender of Jamaica, upon the ground of its being conquered by an usurper.[67] The English Ministers submitted the question to the ablest civilians in the country, and they were unanimous in their opinion that whatever conquest had been achieved by the arms of G. Britain, whether under lawful or usurped authority, that acquisition, once annexed and become an integral part of the Dominion, it was safe to maintain even by force of arms. And can it seriously be supposed, first, that the French nation will ever receive a Monarch forced upon them at the point of the bayonet by the allied armies, knowing that the incentive that provokes those allies is the partition of France? And, 2ndly, admitting the restoration were practicable, would the Kings, whose object would be popularity, venture to dismember their country? Why, even the unhappy emigrants, starving and exiled, feel triumph and exultation at every victory obtained by their countrymen.
Washington died towards the close of the year 1799. His name will stand high in the page of history, and posterity will be apt to outstep truth to bestow enthusiastic eulogy upon him, who has been great from his mediocrity. Mankind delight in assigning deep designs to very obvious facts. We shall hear of his being the first among generals, legislators, patriots, and practical philosophers, of his integrity, his disinterestedness in sacrificing to the public, of his well understood ambition in preferring a splendid obscurity to elevated insignificancy; in short, what will not be said except the truth—a plain, painstaking, plodding man, whose profession of land surveyor taught him a smattering of mixed mathematics which became useful when military positions were to be conceived, a mild, even temper, that neither offended nor captivated. So much will be said, and hitherto so little has been said, that I shall wait and hear. All France and America mourned at his death.
Canning sent to beg we would fix a day that he might dine here. He came, we had only Lds. G. Leveson, Boringdon, and Ly. Bess. Went off very agreeably. He was witty upon the new Institution,[68] which is a very bad imitation of the Institut at Paris; hitherto there is only one Professor, who is a jack-of-all-trades, as he lectures alike upon chemistry and shipbuilding.
HORNE TOOKE’S ELECTION
When Horne Tooke harangued the electors of Westminster from the hustings he was often put out by one of the mob closing his sentences with a nasal ‘Amen.’ This ridiculous finale did him more mischief than all the arguments of his adversaries to prove his incapacity, on account of having taken Priest’s orders, and now the Bishop of London refuses to induct him because he is a layman. He is ingenious enough, I doubt not, to reconcile these seeming contradictions.[69]
Hare, joking with Ld. H. upon his small divisions, some of which have been composed of Ld. King and himself only, says he ought to say, ‘Ego et Rex meus.’