From thence, your journey to The Hague will be but a short one; and you would arrive there at that season of the year when The Hague is, in my mind, the most agreeable, smiling scene in Europe; and from The Hague you would have but three very easy days journey to me at Spa.  Do as you like; for, as I told you before, ‘Ella e assolutamente padrone’.  But lest you should answer that you desire to be determined by me, I will eventually tell you my opinion.  I am rather inclined to the latter plan; I mean that of your coming to Bonn, staying there according as you like it, and then passing the remainder of your time, that is May and June, at The Hague.  Our connection and transactions with the, Republic of the United Provinces are such, that you cannot be too well acquainted with that constitution, and with those people.  You have established good acquaintances there, and you have been ‘fetoie’ round by the foreign ministers; so that you will be there ‘en pais connu’.  Moreover, you have not seen the Stadtholder, the ‘Gouvernante’, nor the court there, which ‘a bon compte’ should be seen.  Upon the whole, then, you cannot, in my opinion, pass the months of May and June more agreeably, or more usefully, than at The Hague.  But, however, if you have any other, plan that you like better, pursue it:  Only let me know what you intend to do, and I shall most cheerfully agree to it.

The parliament will be dissolved in about ten days, and the writs for the election of the new one issued out immediately afterward; so that, by the end of next month, you may depend upon being ’Membre de la chambre basse’; a title that sounds high in foreign countries, and perhaps higher than it deserves.  I hope you will add a better title to it in your own, I mean that of a good speaker in parliament:  you have, I am sure, all, the materials necessary for it, if you will but put them together and adorn them.  I spoke in parliament the first month I was in it, and a month before I was of age; and from the day I was elected, till the day that I spoke.  I am sure I thought nor dreamed of nothing but speaking.  The first time, to say the truth, I spoke very indifferently as to the matter; but it passed tolerably, in favor of the spirit with which I uttered it, and the words in which I had dressed it.  I improved by degrees, till at last it did tolerably well.  The House, it must be owned, is always extremely indulgent to the two or three first attempts of a young speaker; and if they find any degree of common sense in what he says, they make great allowances for his inexperience, and for the concern which they suppose him to be under.  I experienced that indulgence; for had I not been a young member, I should certainly have been, as I own I deserved, reprimanded by the House for some strong and indiscreet things that I said.  Adieu!  It is indeed high time.

LETTER CC

London, March 26, 1754