Pretender’s great agent, made a most violent speech at the opening of the Ratcliffe Library.  The ministry denounced judgment, but, in their old style, have grown frightened, and dropped it.  However, this menace gave occasion to a meeting and union between the Prince’s party and the Jacobites which Lord Egmont has been labouring all the winter.  They met at the St. Alban’s tavern, near Pall Mall, last Monday morning, a hundred and twelve Lords and Commoners.  The Duke of Beaufort opened the assembly with a panegyric on the stand that had been made this winter against so corrupt an administration, and hoped it would continue, and desired harmony.  Lord Egmont seconded this strongly, and begged they would come up to Parliament early next winter.  Lord Oxford spoke next; and then Potter with great humour, and to the great abashment of the Jacobites, said he was very glad to see this union, and from thence hoped, that if another attack like the last Rebellion should be made on the Royal Family, they would all stand by them.  No reply was made to this.  Then Sir Watkyn Williams spoke, Sir Francis Dashwood,[2] and Tom Pitt, and the meeting broke up.  I don’t know what this coalition may produce:  it will require time with no better heads than compose it at present, though the great Mr. Dodington had carried to the conference the assistance of his.  In France a very favourable event has happened for us, the disgrace of Maurepas,[3] one of our bitterest enemies, and the greatest promoter of their marine.  Just at the beginning of the war, in a very critical period, he had obtained a very large sum for that service, but which one of the other factions, lest he should gain glory and credit by it, got to be suddenly given away to the King of Prussia.

[Footnote 1:  Dr. King was Principal of St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford, and one of the chief supports of the Jacobite party after 1745.]

[Footnote 2:  Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1761, through the influence of the Earl of Bute.  He was the owner of Medmenham Abbey, on the Thames, and as such, the President of the profligate Club whose doings were made notorious by the proceedings against Wilkes, and who, in compliment to him, called themselves the Franciscans.]

[Footnote 3:  The Comte de Maurepas was the grandson of the Chancellor of France, M. de Pontchartrain.  When only fourteen years old Louis had made him Secretary of State for the Marine, as a consolation to his grandfather for his dismissal; and he continued in office till the accession of Louis XVI., when he was appointed Prime Minister.  He was not a man of any statesmanlike ability; but Lacretelle ascribes to him “les graces d’un esprit aimable et frivole qui avait le don d’amuser un vieillard toujours porte a un elegant badinage” (ii. 53); and in a subsequent letter speaks of him as a man of very lively powers of conversation.]

Sir Charles Williams[1] is appointed envoy to this last King:  here is an epigram which he has just sent over on Lord Egmont’s opposition to the Mutiny Bill: