It were miserable after this to tell you that Prince Ferdinand has cut to pieces two or three squadrons of Austrians.  I frame to myself that if I was commander-in-chief.  I should on a sudden appear in the middle of Vienna, and oblige the Empress to give an Archduchess with half a dozen provinces to some infant prince or other, and make a peace before the bread wagons were come up.  Difficulties are nothing; all depends on the sphere in which one is placed.

You must excuse my altitudes I feel myself very impertinent just now, but as I know it, I trust I shall not be more so than is becoming.

The Dutch cloud is a little dispersed; the privy council have squeezed out some rays of sunshine by restoring One Of’ their ships, and by adjudging that we captors should prove the affirmative of contraband goods, instead of the goods proving themselves so:  just as if one was ordered to believe that if a blackamoor is christened Thomas, he is a white.  These distinctions are not quite adapted to the meridian of a flippant English privateer’s comprehensions:  however, the murmur is not great yet.  I don’t know what may betide if the minister should order the mob to be angry with the Ministry, nor whether Mr. Pitt or the mob will speak first.  He is laid up with the gout, and it is as much as the rest of the administration can do to prevent his flying out.  I am sorry, after you have been laying in such bales of Grotius and Puffendorf, that you must be forced to correct the text by a Dutch comment.  You shall have the pamphlet you desire, and Lord Mansfield’s famous answer to the Prussian manifesto, (I don’t know whether it is in French,) but you must now read Hardwickius usum Batavorum.(1026)

We think we have lost Fort St. David, but have some scanty hopes of a victorious codicil, as our fleet there seems to have had the superiority.  The King of Spain is certainly not dead, and the Italian war in appearance is blown over.  This summer, I think, must finish all war, for who will have men, who will have money to furnish another campaign?  Adieu!

P. S. Mr. Conway has got the first regiment of dragoons on Hawley’s death.

(1021) Maria, second daughter of Sir Edward Walpole, afterwards married to William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, brother of King George iii.

(1022) James, second Earl of Waldegrave, knight of the garter, and governor of George Prince of Wales, afterwards George iii.

(1023) Lady Maria Churchill, daughter of Sir Robert Walpole.

(1024) Frederick Keppel, fourth son of William Anne, Earl of Albemarle, by Lady Anne Lennox, daughter of the first Duke of Richmond.

(1025) Miss Nichols, afterwards Marchioness of Carnarvon.

(1026) Philip Yorke, Earl of Hardwicke.

485 Letter 312
To George Montagu, Esq. 
Arlington Street, April 26, 1759.