to give it up totally into their hands, that all manner of expedients have been projected to get rid of their proposals, or to limit their power.  Thus the case stands at this instant:  the Parliament has been put off for a fortnight, to gain time; the Lord knows whether that will suffice to bring on any sort of temper!  In the meantime the government stands still; pray Heaven the war may too!  You will wonder how fifteen or sixteen persons can be of such importance.  In the first place, their importance has been conferred on them, and has been notified to the nation by these concessions and messages; next, Minorca[1] is gone; Oswego gone;[2] the nation is in a ferment; some very great indiscretions in delivering a Hanoverian soldier from prison by a warrant from the Secretary of State have raised great difficulties; instructions from counties, boroughs, especially from the City of London, in the style of 1641, and really in the spirit of 1715 and 1745, have raised a great flame; and lastly, the countenance of Leicester House, which Mr. Pitt is supposed to have, and which Mr. Legge thinks he has, all these tell Pitt that he may command such numbers without doors as may make the majorities within the House tremble.

[Footnote 1:  Minorca had been taken by the Duc de Richelieu; Admiral Byng, after an indecisive action with the French fleet, having adopted the idea that he should not be able to save it, for which, as is too well known, he was condemned to death by a court-martial.]

[Footnote 2:  “Oswego gone.” “A detachment of the enemy was defeated by Colonel Broadstreet on the river Onondaga; on the other hand, the small forts of Ontario and Oswego were reduced by the French” (Lord Stanhope, “History of England,” c. 33).]

Leicester House[1] is by some thought inclined to more pacific measures.  Lord Bute’s being established Groom of the Stole has satisfied.  They seem more occupied in disobliging all their new court than in disturbing the King’s.  Lord Huntingdon, the new Master of the Horse to the Prince, and Lord Pembroke, one of his Lords, have not been spoken to.  Alas! if the present storms should blow over, what seeds for new!  You must guess at the sense of this paragraph, which it is difficult, at least improper, to explain to you; though you could not go into a coffee-house here where it would not be interpreted to you.  One would think all those little politicians had been reading the Memoirs of the minority of Louis XIV.

[Footnote 1:  Leicester House was the London residence of the young Prince of Wales.]

There has been another great difficulty:  the season obliging all camps to break up, the poor Hanoverians have been forced to continue soaking in theirs.  The county magistrates have been advised that they are not obliged by law to billet foreigners on public-houses, and have refused.  Transports were yesterday ordered to carry away the Hanoverians!  There are eight thousand men taken from America; for I am sure we can spare none from hence.  The negligence and dilatoriness of the ministers at home, the wickedness of our West Indian governors, and the little-minded quarrels of the regulars and irregular forces, have reduced our affairs in that part of the world to a most deplorable state.  Oswego, of ten times more importance even than Minorca, is so annihilated that we cannot learn the particulars.