heat of the house into the Speaker’s chamber, and there were some fifteen others of us-an under door-keeper thought a question was new put, when it was not, and, withou@ giving us notice, clapped the door to.  I asked him how he dared lock us out without calling us:  he replied insolently, “It was his duty, and he would do it again:”  one of the party went to him, commended him, and told him he should be punished if he acted otherwise.  Sir R. is in great spirits, and still sanguine.  I have so little experience, that I shall not be amazed at whatever scenes follow.  My dear child, we have triumphed twenty years; is it strange that fortune should at last forsake us; or ought we not always to expect it, especially in this kingdom?  They talk loudly of the year forty-one, and promise themselves all the confusions that began a hundred years ago from the same date.  I hope they prognosticate wrong; but should it be so, I can be happy in other places.  One reflection I shall have, very sweet, though very melancholy; that if our family is to be the sacrifice that shall first pamper discord, at least the one,’ the part of it that interested all my concerns, and must have suffered from our ruin, is safe, secure, and above the rage of confusion:  nothing in this world can touch her peace now!

To-morrow and Friday we go upon the Westminster election-you will not wonder, shall you, if you hear the next post that we have lost that too?  Good night.  Yours, ever.

(342) Giles Earle, Esq. one of the lords of the treasury and who had been chairman of the committees of the House of Commons from 1727 to the date of this letter.  He had been successively groom of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales in 1718, clerk comptroller of the King"s household in 1720, commissioner of the Irish revenue in 1728, and a lord of the treasury in 1738.  Mr. Earle was a man of broad coarse wit, and a lively image of his style and sentiments has been preserved by Sir C. H. Williams, in his “Dialogue between Giles Earle and Bubb Dodington."-E.

(343) George Lee, brother to the lord-chief justice; he was appointed one of the lords of the admiralty on the following change, which post he resigned on the disgrace of his patron, Lord Granville.  He was designed by the Prince of Wales for his first minister, and, immediately on the prince’s death, was appointed treasurer to the princess dowager, and soon after made dean of the arches, a knight, and privy counsellor.  He died in 1758.

(344) In a letter to Dodington, written from Spa, on the 8th of September, Lord Chesterfield says:-"I am for acting at the very beginning of the session.  The court generally proposes some servile and shameless tool of theirs to be chairman of the committee of privileges.  Why should not we, therefore, pick up some Whig of a fair character, and with personal connexions, to set up in opposition?  I think we should be pretty strong upon this point."-E.