DEBATE ON AMERICAN TAXES—­PETITION OF THE PERIWIG-MAKERS—­FEMALE HEAD-DRESSES—­LORD BYRON’S DUEL—­OPENING OF ALMACK’S—­NO. 45.

TO THE EARL OF HERTFORD.

ARLINGTON STREET, Feb. 12, 1765.

A great many letters pass between us, my dear lord, but I think they are almost all of my writing.  I have not heard from you this age.  I sent you two packets together by Mr. Freeman, with an account of our chief debates.  Since the long day, I have been much out of order with a cold and cough, that turned to a fever:  I am now taking James’s powder, not without apprehensions of the gout, which it gave me two or three years ago.

There has been nothing of note in Parliament but one slight day on the American taxes,[1] which, Charles Townshend supporting, received a pretty heavy thump from Barre, who is the present Pitt, and the dread of all the vociferous Norths and Rigbys, on whose lungs depended so much of Mr. Grenville’s power.  Do you never hear them to Paris?

[Footnote 1:  Mr. Grenville’s taxation of stamps and other articles in our American colonies, which caused great discontent, and was repealed by Lord Rockingham’s Ministry.]

The operations of the Opposition are suspended in compliment to Mr. Pitt, who has declared himself so warmly for the question on the Dismission of officers, that that motion waits for his recovery.  A call of the House is appointed for next Wednesday, but as he has had a relapse, the motion will probably be deferred.  I should be very glad if it was to be dropped entirely for this session, but the young men are warm and not easily bridled.

If it was not too long to transcribe, I would send you an entertaining petition of the periwig-makers to the King, in which they complain that men will wear their own hair.  Should one almost wonder if carpenters were to remonstrate, that since the peace their trade decays, and that there is no demand for wooden legs? Apropos my Lady Hertford’s friend, Lady Harriot Vernon, has quarrelled with me for smiling at the enormous head-gear of her daughter, Lady Grosvenor.  She came one night to Northumberland House with such display of friz, that it literally spread beyond her shoulders.  I happened to say it looked as if her parents had stinted her in hair before marriage, and that she was determined to indulge her fancy now.  This, among ten thousand things said by all the world, was reported to Lady Harriot, and has occasioned my disgrace.  As she never found fault with anybody herself, I excuse her.  You will be less surprised to hear that the Duchess of Queensberry has not yet done dressing herself marvellously:  she was at Court on Sunday in a gown and petticoat of red flannel....