ACCOUNT OF THE DEBATE ON THE GENERAL WARRANT.

TO THE EARL OF HERTFORD.

ARLINGTON STREET, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 1764.

My dear Lord,—­You ought to be witness to the fatigue I am suffering, before you can estimate the merit I have in being writing to you at this moment.  Cast up eleven hours in the House of Commons on Monday, and above seventeen hours yesterday,—­ay, seventeen at length,—­and then you may guess if I am tired! nay, you must add seventeen hours that I may possibly be there on Friday, and then calculate if I am weary.  In short, yesterday was the longest day ever known in the House of Commons—­why, on the Westminster election at the end of my father’s reign, I was at home by six.  On Alexander Murray’s affair, I believe, by five—­on the militia, twenty people, I think, sat till six, but then they were only among themselves, no heat, no noise, no roaring.  It was half an hour after seven this morning before I was at home.  Think of that, and then brag of your French parliaments!

What is ten times greater, Leonidas and the Spartan minority did not make such a stand at Thermopylae, as we did.  Do you know, we had like to have been the majority?  Xerxes[1] is frightened out of his senses; Sysigambis[1] has sent an express to Luton to forbid Phraates[1] coming to town to-morrow; Norton’s[2] impudence has forsaken him; Bishop Warburton is at this moment reinstating Mr. Pitt’s name in the dedication to his Sermons, which he had expunged for Sandwich’s; and Sandwich himself is—­at Paris, perhaps, by this time, for the first thing that I expect to hear to-morrow is, that he is gone off.

[Footnote 1:  “Xerxes, Sysigambis, Phraates.” These names contain allusions to one of Mdlle.  Scuderi’s novels, which, as D’Israeli remarks, are “representations of what passed at the Court of France”; but in this letter the scene of action is transferred to England.  Xerxes is George III.; Sysigambis, the Princess Dowager; and Phraates is Lord Bute.]

[Footnote 2:  Sir Fletcher Norton, the Speaker.]

Now are you mortally angry with me for trifling with you, and not telling you at once the particulars of this almost-revolution?  You may be angry, but I shall take my own time, and shall give myself what airs I please both to you, my Lord Ambassador, and to you, my Lord Secretary of State, who will, I suppose, open this letter—­if you have courage enough left.  In the first place, I assume all the impertinence of a prophet,—­aye, of that great curiosity, a prophet, who really prophesied before the event, and whose predictions have been accomplished.  Have I, or have I not, announced to you the unexpected blows that would be given to the administration?—­come, I will lay aside my dignity, and satisfy your impatience.  There’s moderation.