The Westminster election, which is still scrutinizing, produced us a parliamentary event this week, and was very near producing something much bigger.  Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt moved to Send for the High-bailiff to inquire into the delay.  The Opposition took it up very high, and on its being carried against them, the Court of Requests was filled next day with the mob, and the House crowded, and big with expectation.  Nugent had flamed and abused Lord Sandwich violently, as author of this outrageous measure.  When the Bailiff appeared, the pacific spirit of the other part of the administration had operated so much, that he was dismissed with honour; and Only instructed to abridge all delays by authority of the House-in short, “we spit in his hat on Thursday, and wiped it off on Friday.”  This is a now fashionable proverb, which I must construe to you.  About ten days ago, at the new Lady Cobham’s(105) assembly, Lord Hervey(106) was leaning over a chair, talking to some women, and holding his hat in his hand.  Lord Cobham came up and spit in it—­yes, spit in it!—­and then, with a loud laugh, turned to Nugent, and said, “Pay me my wager.”  In short, he had laid a guinea that he committed this absurd brutality, and that it was not resented.  Lord Hervey, with great temper and sensibility, asked if he had any farther occasion for his hat?—­“Oh!  I see you are angry!”—­“Not very well pleased.”  Lord Cobham took the fatal hat and wiped it, made a thousand foolish apologies, and wanted to pass it for a joke.  Next morning he rose with the sun, and went to visit Lord Hervey; so did Nugent:  he would not see them, but wrote to the Spitter, (or, as he is now called, Lord Gob’em,) to say, that he had affronted him very grossly before company, but having involved Nugent in it, he desired to know to which he was to address himself for satisfaction.  Lord Cobham wrote him a most submissive answer, and begged pardon both in his own and Nugent’s name.  Here it rested for a few days; till getting wind, Lord Hervey wrote again to insist on an explicit apology under Lord Cobham’s own hand, with a rehearsal of the excuses that had been made to him.  This, too, was complied with, and the fair conqueror(107) shows all the letters.(108) Nugent’s disgraces have not ended here:  the night of his having declaimed so furiously he was standing by Lady Catherine Pelham, against Lord Sandwich at the masquerade, without his mask:  she was telling him a history of a mad dog, (which I believe she had bit herself.) young Leveson, the Duchess of Bedford’s brother, came up, without his mask too, and looking at Nugent, said, , I have seen a mad dog to-day, and a silly dog too.”—­“I suppose, Mr. Leveson,(109) you have been looking in a glass.”—­“No, I see him now.”  Upon which they walked off together, but were prevented from fighting, (if Nugent would have fought,) and were reconciled at the side-board.  You perceive by this that our factions are ripening.  The Argyll(110) carried all the Scotch against the turnpike:  they were willing to be carried, for the Duke of Bedford, in case it should have come into the Lords, had writ to the sixteen Peers to solicit their votes; but with so little deference, that he enclosed all the letters under one cover, directed to the British Coffee-house!