Your triumphs in Italy are in high fashion:  till very lately, Italy was scarce ever mentioned as part of the scene of war.  The apprehensions of your great King making his peace began to alarm us and when we just believed it finished, we have received nothing but torrents of good news.  The King of Sardinia(1180) has not only carried his own character and success to the highest pitch, but seems to have given a turn to the general face of the war, which has a much more favourable aspect than was to be expected three months ago, has made himself as considerable in the scale as the Prussian, but with real valour, and as great abilities, and without the infamy, of the other’s politics.

The rebellion seems once more at its last gasp; the Duke is marched, and the rebels fly before him, in the utmost want of money.  The famous Hazard sloop is taken, with two hundred men and officers, and about eight thousand pounds in money, from France.  In the midst of such good news from thence, Mr. Conway has got a regiment, for which, I am sure, you will take part in my joy.  In Flanders we propose to make another great effort, with an army of above ninety thousand men; that is, forty Dutch, above thirty Austrians, eighteen Hanoverians, the Hessians, who are to return; and we propose twelve thousand Saxons, but no English; though, if the rebellion is at all suppressed in any time, I imagine some of our troops will go, and the Duke command the whole:  in the mean time, the army will be under Prince Waldeck and Bathiani.  You will wonder at my running so glibly over eighteen thousand Hanoverians, especially as they are all to be in our pay, but the nation’s digestion has been much facilitated by the pill given to Pitt, of vice-treasurer of Ireland.(1181) Last Friday was the debate on this subject, when we carried these troops by 255 against 122:  Pitt, Lyttelton, three Grenvilles, and Lord BarringTton, all voting roundly for them, though the eldest Grenville, two years ago, had declared in the House, that he would seal it with his blood that he never would give his vote for a Hanoverian.  Don’t you shudder at such perjury? and this in a republic, and where there is no religion that dispenses with oaths!  Pitt was the only one of this ominous band that opened his — mouth,(1182) and it was to add impudence to profligacy; but no criminal at the Place de Greve was ever so racked as he was by Dr. Lee, a friend of Lord Granville, who gave him the question both ordinary and extraordinary.

General Hawley has been tried (not in person, you may believe) and condemned by a Scotch jury for murder, on hanging a spy.  What do you say to this? or what will you say when I tell you, that Mr. Ratcliffe, who has been so long confined in the Tower, and supposed the Pretender’s youngest son, is not only suffered to return to France, but was entertained at a great dinner by the Duke of Richmond as a relation!(1183) The same Duke has refused his beautiful Lady Emily to Lord Kildare,(1184) the richest and the first peer of Ireland, on a ridiculous notion of the King’s evil being in the family—­but sure that ought to be no objection:  a very little grain more of pride and Stuartism might persuade all the royal bastards that they have a faculty of curing that distemper.