too soon, and only show how much we want good news, by accepting every thing as such; though the second report generally proves sinister.

LETTER CCCXLVIII.

March 13, 1781.

I HAVE just received your three lines of Feb. 28 by your courier, and hurry to reply, less he should call for my answer before it is finished. I have indeed nothing to tell you that might not go through all the inquisitions and post-offices in Europe; for I can only send you my own vague conjectures or opinions. The guns are going off for the conquest of Eustatia by Rodney, which is just arrived.* It may be a good circumstance towards disposing the Dutch to peace; and perhaps to balance what your despatch brings, which is probably an attempt or design on Minorca. We imagine, too, that the grand fleet sailed yesterday at last, which is to relieve Gibraltar, and annihilate the combined squadrons.

Last week the stocks rose six per cent. in two days. It was given out that the Emperor and Empress had offered their mediation, and that all parties had accepted it, and that Sir Joseph Yorke was to depart on wings of winds to Vienna to conclude the peace. Much of this cargo of propitious news is fallen off, as well as the stocks. Sir Joseph is not gone; and at most it is said that their Imperial Majesties have made a defensive alliance, and that Russia had civilly told the Dutch that she could do no more for them, but advised them to make peace. Now, would you know my own belief? It is, that, whatever advances are made to us, we shall profit of none, but persist in the American war; at least in such a submission as may leave us power to violate any treaty and begin again. Our foolhardiness is past all credibility; the nation is besotted, and not a great view is left above or below. If I filled my paper, I should but dilate on those two points. For my part, I do assure you, I cast all politics out of my thoughts. I see no glimmering of hope that we should be a great nation again; nor do we deserve to be. I wish for peace at any rate;

rendered themselves liable, the Insurgents not only rejected the favourable offers held out to them by Sir Henry Clinton, but, to show their irreconcilable enmity to the mother country, delivered up the unhappy men who had acted as his agents. -ED.

* In February, the British fleet and army, under the commands of Sir George Rodney and General Vaughan, appearing suddenly before and surrounding the island of St. Eustatia, the Dutch governor, ignorant of the rupture between England and Holland, surrendered it; only recommending the town and inhabitants to British clemency. The wealth found in the place excited the astonishment of the conquerors. The value of the commodities was estimated at more than three millions sterling, and two hundred and fifty vessels of all descriptions were taken in the bay, besides six frigates.-ED.

and I cease to love my country, because I am disinterested, just as they do who sell it, because they are the reverse. I cannot love what deserves no esteem.

Private news we have none, but the silly topics of dancers and crowds. Nothing at all passes in the House of Lords, and not much in the other, but jobs. Their Highnesses of Cumberland have turned short from the King, and court the Prince of Wales, and the Opposition, and the Ton, and the mob. My friendst sit still, and sensibly. let the hurricane lower which way it will. It will soon, I suppose, produce confusion and new quarrels; but you know me too well to imagine that I will embark, even in speculation, on chapters to come. When I doubt almost all I hear in the present moment, I shall not roam into guesses on future events, which I probably shall not know whether they happen or not. Adieu! I must seal my letter to have it ready. It is not very informing, but at least it tells you that every thing is in suspense.

LETTER CCCXLIX.

Berkeley Square, March 30, 1781.

I WROTE a letter to you for your messenger the moment he arrived, but he was detained here so long that it must have reached you antiquated. He found us exulting for the capture of St. Eustatia: the scene is a little changed since, both in the West and East. America is once more not quite ready to be conquered, though every now and then we fancy it is. Tarleton is defeated, Lord Cornwallis is checked, and Arnold not sure of having betrayed his friends to much purpose. If we are less certain of recovering what we have thrown away, we are in full as much danger of losing what we acquired, not more creditably, at the other end of the world. Hyder Ally, an Indian potentate, thinking he has as much right to the diamonds of his own country as the Rumbolds and Sykes's, who were originally waiters in a tavern, has given us a blow, and has not done.

* His Royal Highness had, on the 1st of January, been declared of age, and ap peared at Court in his new character.-ED.

The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester.

Intelligence had recently reached England, that Hyder Ali Khan, one of the greatest princes as well as the greatest warrior that India ever produced, had, in the preceding July, with an army of one hundred thousand men, burst at once, like a prodigious tempest, into the Carnatic. This terrible invasion is described by Mr. Burke in the following wonderful passage of his speech on the debts of the Nabob of Arcot: "When at length Hyder Ali found that he had to do with men who either would sign no convention, or whom no treaty and no signature could bind, he decreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible and predestinated criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved, in the gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to leave the whole Carnatic an everlasting monument of vengeance, and to put perpetual desolation as a barrier between him and

Europe has a mass of debts to pay to the other quarters of the globe; which, on the merit of having improved navigation and invented gunpowder, we have thought we had a right to desolate and plunder; and we have been such savages as to punish each other for our crimes. The Romans havocked the world for glory; the Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, and English, for gold; but each nation thirsted to engross the whole mass, and became scourges to each other. Attila and Hyder Ally are at least as innocent as Julius Cæsar and Lord Clive.

Our flect is gone to rescue Gibraltar. The French fleet has not yet moved; but the next month will probably be an important one. The negotiations for peace seem to have stopped in their birth, and probably will depend on the events of that month. The Dutch reply to our Manifesto will not raise our credit, as it gives us the lie pretty flatly on our assertion of their having attempted to make us no satisfaction on our complaints of the conduct of Amsterdam. Methinks it were better to be a little accurate, as there are more readers in Europe than our country gentlemen.

I am sorry when I cannot admire all our proceedings; but politics will not always stand the test of cool survey. Indeed, it is not fair to decide on parts, especially in the heat of events. The wisdom of measures must depend on the prudence, goodness, and object of the system, together with a just calculation of the probability of events, and a comparison of the value of the advantage of success with the danger and detriment of miscarriage. I am far from allowing that even wise measures, with all the profit of success, are good; for then

those against whom the faith which holds the moral elements of the world together was no protection. Having terminated his disputes with every enemy and every rival, who buried their mutual animosities in their common detestation against the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot, he drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction; and compounding all the materials of fury, havoc, and desolation into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents on the plains of the Carnatic. Then ensued a scene of wo, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All the horrors of war before known or heard of were mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants flying from their flaming villages in part were slaughtered; others, without regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank or sacredness of function, fathers torn from children, husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst the goading spears of drivers and the trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in an unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this tempest, fled to walled cities. But escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine." In a letter written home to the East India Directors at the close of the year 1780, Sir Eyre Coote says of Hyder Ali, that "he had taken every measure which could occur to the most experienced general to distress us, and to render himself formidable; and that his conduct in his civil capacity had been supported by a degree of political address unequalled by any power that had yet appeared in Indostan."-ED.

fortunate conquerors would be excusable, which I shall never think, but I doubt we are not likely to have that dazzling consolation; nor have I knowledge or penetration enough to discover the beauty of the system that threw us into the American war, and still prefers war with France, Spain, and Holland, to the confession of our mistake. Adieu! my dear sir.

P.S. I am impatient for the History of the Medici.

LETTER CCCL.

Berkeley Square, April 27, 1781.

PERHAPS you may think I am fallen into a lethargy; but it is only the war that is so. At least, though the ocean is covered with navies, they do nothing but walk about in their sleep,-unless you know to the contrary; for you are nearer to the scene of action, if there is any, than we are. The Spanish fleet is said to be retired to Cadiz, and to have civilly left the path to Gibraltar open, which would be very civil. In short, I can tell you nothing but hearsay, or what people say without having heard. It is a month since I wrote to you, and yet nothing has happened but an Extraordinary Gazette or two, which brags, like a bridegroom at threescore, of having forced two little fortresses that begged to be ravished, and of Arbuthnot having balked an inferior squadron. Methinks we Western powers should make peace, and not expose ourselves to the Vandals of the North, who overrun kingdoms in fewer wecks than it costs us years to take an island no bigger than half-a-crown.

The Parliament has quite left off business, though it has not shut up shop. In short, I hope your nephew writes to you, for I can find nothing to say; and where he does, is past my comprehension. If I trusted to my imagination, I should not wonder at its being worn out; but, as I have always piqued myself upon telling nothing but facts that at least I believe true, my eyes and ears are not gone; and, if there was an event no bigger than a grain of millet, I could easily know it; for those drag-nets, our newspapers, let nothing escape them, from whales to the most insignificant fry. But four days ago, the Public Advertiser informed the town that I have a field that wants draining at Strawberry Hill, which no doubt is very important intelligence! Antiquaries used to be ridiculous for recovering trifles from the havoc of time: now we have daily writers that sift the kennels, and save every straw that would be swallowed in the common sewer. Then think what thousands of loiterers we must have, who can buy and read such rubbish, in the midst of a civil war, and wars with the great nations! How contemptible we are! and, to our shame, these journals of our trifling are circulated all over Europe! Don't you blush when you read them? And do you wonder that I have nothing to say? I have always reckoned my own letters very

trifling and superficial; but two misses that correspond would be ashamed of communicating such foolish paragraphs as compose the daily lectures of the metropolis: and yet it is well when they are only foolish-more commonly they are brutal or scandalous.

Well! I have been writing about nothing, and may as well finish. You see my silence is owing to no want of good will.

LETTER CCCLI.

Strawberry Hill, May 6, 1781.

YES, you were in the right in your prophecy of the 21st of April, which I received yesterday. Darby has relieved Gibraltar, without opposition from the Spanish fleet, as we heard two days ago; nay, that he braved them in Cadiz. I think our conduct was not a little rash, but I am sure theirs has been as much the reverse. That of the French is not more explicable, and I can easily believe the King of Spain will resent it.

I am grieved to hear you complain of the gout, and the weakness it leaves in your hands. I wish you had adopted my bootikins. I have suffered terribly in my hands, and my fingers are full of chalkstones, and yet you see I write as well as ever: but do not alarm yourself; your fits have been too rare and too slight to disable you. One always fancies the weakness from a fit incurable; twenty years ago I imagined that I never should walk again.

Our affairs in the East I do believe are very bad;* I am surprised they are not so every where: but France, Spain, and Holland together, seem very feeble enemies. It seems to be a favourable moment for making peace, as it will be some honour to have kept them all at bay.

On the 30th of April, Lord North had moved for a Committee of Secrecy, to inquire into the causes of the war in the Carnatic. An amendment to leave out the words "of secrecy," proposed by Mr. Fox, was warmly seconded by Mr. Burke. "We are called upon," he said, "by every argument of morality and of policy, by every precept of religion and duty, to make that justice which we reverence as public as the noon-day sun. It has been the sentiment and the sense of all ages. Let me fight with Jupiter,' says Ajax, but give me day-light. Let me have con demnation or let me have acquittal in the face of day.' The acquittal that is secret cannot be honourable; it leaves a stain even upon innocence. The condemnation that is secret cannot be just; it leaves a prejudice in favour of the criminal, inju rious to the tribunal by whom he is tried." The amendment was negatived by 134 to 80.-ED.

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