POLITICAL EXCITEMENT—­LORD G. GORDON—­EXTRAORDINARY GAMBLING AFFAIRS IN INDIA.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

STRAWBERRY HILL, Feb. 6, 1780.

I write only when I have facts to send.  Detached scenes there have been in different provinces:  they will be collected soon into a drama in St. Stephen’s Chapel.  One or two and twenty counties, and two or three towns, have voted petitions.[1] But in Northamptonshire Lord Spencer was disappointed, and a very moderate petition was ordered.  The same happened at Carlisle.  At first, the Court was struck dumb, but have begun to rally.  Counter-protests have been signed in Hertford and Huntingdon shires, in Surrey and Sussex.  Last Wednesday a meeting was summoned in Westminster Hall:  Charles Fox harangued the people finely and warmly; and not only a petition was voted, but he was proposed for candidate for that city at the next general election, and was accepted joyfully.  Wilkes was his zealous advocate:  how few years since a public breakfast was given at Holland House to support Lord Luttrell against Wilkes!  Charles Fox and his brother rode thence at the head of their friends to Brentford.  Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” contains not stranger transformations than party can work.

[Footnote 1:  These petitions were chiefly for economical reform, for which Burke was preparing a Bill.]

I must introduce a new actor to you, a Lord George Gordon,—­metamorphosed a little, too, for his family were Jacobites and Roman Catholics:  he is the Lilburne of the Scottish Presbyterians, and an apostle against the Papists.  He dresses, that is, wears long lank hair about his shoulders, like the first Methodists; though I take the modern ones to be no Anti-Catholics.  This mad lord, for so all his family have been too, and are, has likewise assumed the patronage of Ireland.  Last Thursday he asked an audience of the King, and, the moment he was admitted into the closet, began reading an Irish pamphlet, and continued for an hour, till it was so dark he could not see; and then left the pamphlet, exacting a promise on royal honour that his Majesty would finish it.  Were I on the throne, I would make Dr. Monro a Groom of my Bedchamber:  indeed it has been necessary for some time; for, of the King’s lords, Lord Bolingbroke is in a mad-house, and Lord Pomfret and my nephew ought to be there.  The last, being fond of onions, has lately distributed bushels of that root to his Militia; Mr. Wyndham will not be surprised.

By the tenor of the petitions you would think we were starving; yet there is a little coin stirring.  Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa tree, the difference of which amounted to a hundred and four-score thousand pounds.  Mr. O’Birne, an Irish gamester, had won one hundred thousand pounds of a young Mr. Harvey of Chigwell, just started from a midshipman[1] into an estate by his elder brother’s death.  O’Birne said, “You can never pay me.”  “I can,” said the youth; “my estate will sell for the debt.”  “No,” said O.; “I will win ten thousand—­you shall throw for the odd ninety.”  They did, and Harvey won.