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 mean time 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 is gone; Oswego gone; 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(730) and 1745, have raised a great flame; and lastly, the countenance of Leicester-house, which Mr. Pitt is supposed to have,(731) 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.

Leicester-house 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.

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 country magistrates have been advised that they arc 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.

My dear Sir, what a present and future picture have I given you!  The details are infinite, and what I have neither time, nor, for many reasons, the imprudence to send by the post:  your good sense will but too well lead you to develop them.  The crisis is most melancholy and alarming.  I remember two or three years ago I wished for more active times, and for events to furnish our correspondence.  I think I could write you a letter almost as big as my Lord Clarendon’s History.  What a bold man is he who shall undertake the administration!  How much shall we be obliged to him!  How mad is he, whoever is ambitious of it!  Adieu!