468 Letter 296 To Sir Horace Mann.  Strawberry Hill, Christmas-day, 1758.

Adieu! my dear Sir—­that is, adieu to our correspondence, for I am neither dying nor quarrelling with you; but as we, Great-Britons, are quarrelling with all Europe, I think very soon I shall not be able to convey a letter to you, but by the way of Africa, and am afraid the post-offices are not very well regulated.  In short, we are on the brink of a Dutch war too.  Their merchants are so enraged that we will not only not suffer them to enrich themselves by carrying all the French trade, and all kinds of military stores to the French settlements, but that they lose their own ships into the bargain, that they are ready to despatch the Princess Royal(983) into the other world even before her time; if her death arrives soon, and she is thought in great danger, it will be difficult for any body else to keep the peace.  Spain and Denmark are in little better humour—­well, if We have not as many lives as a cat or the King of Prussia!  However, our spirits do not droop; we are raising thirteen millions, we look upon France as totally undone, and that they have not above five loaves and a few small fishes left; we intend to take all America from them next summer, and then if Spain and Holland are not terrified, we shall be at leisure to deal with them.  Indeed, we are rather in a hurry to do all this, because people may be weary of paying thirteen millions; and besides it may grow decent for Mr. Pitt to visit his gout, which this year he has been forced to send to the Bath without him.  I laugh, but seriously we are in a critical situation; and it is as true, that if Mr. Pitt had not exerted the spirit and activity that he has, we should ere now have been past a critical situation.  Such a war as ours carried on by my Lord Hardwicke, with the dull dilatoriness of a Chancery suit, would long ago have reduced us to what suits in Chancery reduce most people!  At present our unanimity is prodigious—­ you Would as soon hear No from an old maid as from the House of Commons—­but I don’t promise you that this tranquillity will last.(984) One has known more ministries overturned of late years by their own squabbles than by any assistance from Parliaments.

Sir George Lee, formerly an heir-apparent(985) to the ministry is dead. it was almost sudden, but he died with great composure.  Lord Arran(986) went off with equal philosophy.  Of the great house of Ormond there now remains only his sister, Lady Emily Butler, a young heiress of ninety-nine.

It is with great pleasure I tell you that Mr. Conway is going to Sluys to settle a cartel with the French.  The commission itself is honourable, but more pleasing as it re-establishes him—­I should say his merit re-establishes him.  All the world now acknowledges it—­and the insufficiency of his brother-generals makes it vain to oppress him any longer.

I am happy that you are pleased with the monument, and vain that you like the Catalogue(987)—­if it would not look too vain, I would tell you that it was absolutely undertaken and finished within five months.  Indeed, the faults in the first edition and the deficiencies show it was; I have just printed another more correct.