to.  I have no mind to go, but cannot recede.  I hope that my spirits will be the better for it, but it is the gloomiest day I ever knew.  The Duchess of Kingston is in a great fright for the consequences of her trial.  Where she is to be tried is not yet decided.  Most people I take it for granted wish it may be in Westminster Hall.  Lord Mansfield opposes it.  It is near five so I shall take my leave.  I wrote this for fear this dinner and a nap, etc., might prevent my writing.  My respects to Lady C. and the dear children.

(133) Lord Bolingbroke.

(134) This letter was not included in those printed by the Historical MSS.  Commission.

In this last letter Selwyn notes the arrival of news from America.  But he preferred to let his friend Storer forward the political information of the moment to Carlisle, so that a letter of Storer is sometimes supplementary to one of Selwyn.  The following is a continuation, so to say, of that which Selwyn wrote on the same date.

Anthony Storer to Lord Carlisle.

1775, December 14, Portugal Street.—­I did not give Selwyn my promise concerning our expedition to Castle Howard, and therefore should not have mentioned it to you; but if I am not able to come, it will be some comfort to me to know that you will have him and St. John; so that if you fail of getting any politics out of George, I think you must be very unlucky if you have not, what you wish, a boar (sic) of politics from the other.

I assure you, at least so it appears to me, that American politics are very much altered.  Taxation and the exercise of it are totally renounced.  You never hear the right mentioned, but in order to give it up.  The rigid politician of last year, such a man for instance as Wellbore Ellis, stands now almost single in the House of Commons.

You ask me if the Intercourse Bill,(135) as it is called, cuts off all commerce and communication with the Islands.  You may guess why it is called the Intercourse Bill; it is lucus a non lucendo.  The Americans are neither to trade with the West Indies or Great Britain; they are not interdicted any commerce with us, but they are to be treated, both themselves and their vessels, as enemies in open time of war, and the captures are to become the property of the commanders and the sailors.

This is the winding up of our catastrophe.  If it lasts more than one year, it seems even to moderate West Indians to be totally ruinous to them.  What seems to affect them most by the passing of this Bill is not the fear of starving, which they have their apprehensions of, but the danger there is of their being taken on false pretences by the men of war that are to protect them, or by the Americans, on whose coast they are always obliged to pass very near.  In short, every West Indian, except Jack Douglas, is in the utmost consternation.

Parliament, that is, the House of Commons, have done their business; we are now waiting for this Bill to pass the Lords, and then we adjourn for the holidays.  The day before yesterday, the Sedgmoor Inclosure Bill, in which Lord Bolingbroke was very much interested (G.  Selwyn was Chairman for and in the Committee) was thrown out, owing to some irregularities—­some differences in the Assent Bill and the House Bill.  As you have had something to do with enclosures, you understand those two words, so I need not explain them.