‘Au revoir’, as Sir Fopling says, and God bless you!

LETTER CCL

Bath, November 2, 1762.

My dear friend:  I arrived here, as I proposed, last Sunday; but as ill as I feared I should be when I saw you.  Head, stomach, and limbs, all out of order.

I have yet seen nobody but Villettes, who is settled here for good, as it is called.  What consequences has the Duke of Devonshire’s resignation had?  He has considerable connections and relations; but whether any of them are resigned enough to resign with him, is another matter.  There will be, to be sure, as many, and as absurd reports, as there are in the law books; I do not desire to know either; but inform me of what facts come to your knowledge, and of such reports only as you believe are grounded.  And so God bless you!

LETTER CCLI

Bath, November 13, 1762.

My dear friend:  I have received your letter, and believe that your preliminaries are very near the mark; and, upon that supposition, I think we have made a tolerable good bargain with Spain; at least full as good as I expected, and almost as good as I wished, though I do not believe that we have got all Florida; but if we have St. Augustin, I suppose that, by the figure of ‘pars pro toto’, will be called all Florida.  We have by no means made so good a bargain with France; for, in truth, what do we get by it, except Canada, with a very proper boundary of the river Mississippi! and that is all.  As for the restrictions upon the French fishery in Newfoundland, they are very well ‘per la predica’, and for the Commissary whom we shall employ:  for he will have a good salary from hence, to see that those restrictions are complied with; and the French will double that salary, that he may allow them all to be broken through.  It is plain to me, that the French fishery will be exactly what it was before the war.

The three Leeward islands, which the French yield to us, are not, all together, worth half so much as that of St. Lucia, which we give up to them.  Senegal is not worth one quarter of Goree.  The restrictions of the French in the East Indies are as absurd and impracticable as those of Newfoundland; and you will live to see the French trade to the East Indies, just as they did before the war.  But after all I have said, the articles are as good as I expected with France, when I considered that no one single person who carried on this negotiation on our parts was ever concerned or consulted in any negotiation before.  Upon the whole, then, the acquisition of Canada has cost us fourscore millions sterling.  I am convinced we might have kept Guadaloupe, if our negotiators had known how to have gone about it.

His most faithful Majesty of Portugal is the best off of anybody in this, transaction, for he saves his kingdom by it, and has not laid out one moidore in defense of it.  Spain, thank God, in some measure, ’paye les pots cassis’; for, besides St. Augustin, logwood, etc., it has lost at least four millions sterling, in money, ships, etc.