“I have been reproached with the oversights of your generals; not a battle has been lost, not a siege has been raised, but it is all owing to me. So much as their personal variances and quarrels are laid at my door.
“The public distresses, though the consequence of a bad administration, and the misfortunes of the times, have been attributed to me, as if my doing. The populace has hissed me, and was often for stopping my coach, and has been near coming to those extremities against me, with which they only are treated whose notorious malversation has manifestly ruined a people.
“Yet, Sire, what gives me most pain, is the ingratitude of those who have felt the effects of my favour. I have often sollicited your Majesty for persons, who were no sooner out of the meanness and obscurity from whence I drew them, than they forgot the kind hand by which they had been raised. I can reckon, hitherto, about three thousand persons who owe their subsistence to me. It is through my care that they have been brought into new stations, where they lost sight of me before they were well warm in their places.
“Of such a great number, not one have I found with any due sense of gratitude: nay, the greater the preferment, the less their acknowledgment; some have even busily caballed against me: those whom I thought most my friends, and whom the important services I had done them should have made such, have been the first in deceiving and injuring me. I have discovered treacheries at which I shuddered; so that since my living at court, I am grown sick of mankind. I should have died a thousand times under the anguish which such injurious treatment has caused me, had not the kindness with which your Majesty honours me reconciled me to life, &c.”
The death of the Prince of Wales,[5] eldest son to George II. and as such, presumptive heir to the crown of England, made some impression at Versailles: this Prince is said not to have been remarkable for those eminent qualities with whose brilliancy the world is so much taken: but they who knew him personally, perceived in him the more solid virtues: compassion, goodness, sensibility, tenderness, candour, affability, a readiness to oblige, and delight in doing good; these were his leading dispositions: a Prince, in a word, qualified to make a people happy. He had married a German Princess, intirely deserving to ascend the throne with him. I have often pitied this Lady’s fate, to lose an affectionate husband and a powerful crown at once, is one of those events which elevated souls alone can bear with firmness. His death occasioned a revolution in political affairs. France had great hopes of things going better, when that Prince should have come to the throne: there was no cordial harmony between him and his father King George. The son often crossed the father’s measures, so that they seldom saw, and seldomer spoke to each other. From this disposition it was hoped, that a Prince, who so much disapproved the present system, would be less inveterate against the house of Bourbon than his predecessors had been. It was imagined that his accession would prove a happy turn for France, when, perhaps, it might have only made matters worse. The sons of Kings, at their entrance on regality, leave their ideas as Princes at the foot of the throne, and take up those of Kings.
George II. is said not to have shewn any great concern at the death of his son, appearing as usual in the drawing-room, and, within a few days, giving audience to Ambassadors: in this there might be a little affectation, it being the known character of that Prince to shew himself firm and unshaken, in the midst of the most unfortunate events. The rest of the royal family were in the deepest affliction: he was also greatly lamented by his houshold; and I am told, that his death is still matter of concern to many.
The death of this Prince likewise caused a national uneasiness, his children being very young, and King George advanced in years, which might be productive of the disorders almost inevitable under a minority. In order to prevent them, the Princess Dowager of Wales was nominated guardian to the King’s successor, and regent of the kingdom, till her son should be of age; but the issue of the deliberation was, that this Lady, who had come into England to wear the crown, should be neither Queen nor Regent.
The French clergy’s affair, though thought to be over, was still going on. The bishops and wealthy incumbents, amidst the privacy of their dwellings, to which they had been ordered, disturbed the state; though ardently desirous of returning to Paris, they were for coming at this privilege as cheap as they could, haggling a long time with the King, who, however, would make no abatement. They insisted on their immunities, they pleaded their solemn promise to the Pope to maintain their rights. This dispute irritated the court, and not a little soured the King. At this juncture, a bishop took it into his head to come and expostulate with me about the clergy’s prerogatives. This certainly was not taking the right time, for as this affair gave so much displeasure to his Majesty, it could not be very pleasing to me. The Prelate made a long-winded harangue, in proof that the church was not to disseize itself of its wealth. He recurred as far back as St. Peter, and through an enumeration of those bulls, by which the church is ordered to keep what it has came down to our times. “My Lord, said I interrupting him, your prerogatives are what I know nothing of, but I know that your chief duty, like that of other subjects, is to obey the King. Say what you will of your bulls and immunities; every body of men declining to conform to its Sovereign’s orders, is guilty of rebellion, and deserves the punishment of high treason.”
A great many bad books came out against the clergy, in vindication of the King’s cause. Among the several writers who, on these occasions, take different parts, one wrote a pamphlet with the title of An Impartial Inquiry into the Immunities of the Clergy. This work was full of very judicious reflections, besides a nervous elegancy of stile: it was indeed the only one on the subject which deserves reading.
After all, it became necessary that the plan which had been proposed, and to which I myself had advised the King, should take place. This was to draw up a state of the value of every churchman’s preferments, that each might be taxed in proportion to his real income; and accordingly the court ordered the intendants of the provinces to oblige all the beneficed clergy to deliver in an account of the nature of their several revenues. There was indeed a very hard clause, in case of a refusal; the intendants being expressly enjoined to seize on the several revenues in the King’s name, and leave the beneficiaries only an alimentary pension. This was insuring their compliance; for being used to superfluity, they could but very indifferently shift with no more than was necessary.