Here has been a congress of most of the ‘ex Ministres’.  If they have raised a battery, as I suppose they have, it is a masked one, for nothing has transpired; only they confess that they intend a most vigorous attack.  ‘D’ailleurs’, there seems to be a total suspension of all business, till the meeting of the parliament, and then ‘Signa canant’.  I am very glad that at this time you are out of it:  and for reasons that I need not mention:  you would certainly have been sent for over, and, as before, not paid for your journey.

Poor Harte is very ill, and condemned to the Hot well at Bristol.  He is a better poet than philosopher:  for all this illness and melancholy proceeds originally from the ill success of his “Gustavus Adolphus.”  He is grown extremely devout, which I am very glad of, because that is always a comfort to the afflicted.

I cannot present Mr. Larpent with my New-Year’s gift, till I come to town, which will be before Christmas at farthest; till when, God bless you!  Adieu.

LETTER CCLXXXIII

London, December 27, 1765.

My dear friend:  I arrived here from Bath last Monday, rather, but not much better, than when I went over there.  My rheumatic pains, in my legs and hips, plague me still, and I must never expect to be quite free from them.

You have, to be sure, had from the office an account of what the parliament did, or rather did not do, the day of their meeting; and the same point will be the great object at their next meeting; I mean the affair of our American Colonies, relatively to the late imposed Stamp-duty, which our Colonists absolutely refuse to pay.  The Administration are for some indulgence and forbearance to those froward children of their mother country; the Opposition are for taking vigorous, as they call them, but I call them violent measures; not less than ’les dragonnades’; and to have the tax collected by the troops we have there.  For my part, I never saw a froward child mended by whipping; and I would not have the mother country become a stepmother.  Our trade to America brings in, ‘communibus annis’, two millions a year; and the Stamp-duty is estimated at but one hundred thousand pounds a year; which I would by no means bring into the stock of the Exchequer, at the loss or even the risk of a million a year to the national stock.

I do not tell you of the Garter given away yesterday, because the newspapers will; but, I must observe, that the Prince of Brunswick’s riband is a mark of great distinction to that family; which I believe, is the first (except our own Royal Family) that has ever had two blue ribands at a time; but it must be owned they deserve them.

One hears of nothing now in town, but the separation of men and their wives.  Will Finch, the Ex-vice Chamberlain, Lord Warwick, and your friend Lord Bolingbroke.  I wonder at none of them for parting; but I wonder at many for still living together; for in this country it is certain that marriage is not well understood.