into the affairs of the empire.  When France got Alsace yielded by treaty, it was very willing to have held it as a fief of the empire; but the empire was then wiser.  Every power should be very careful not to give the least pretense to a neighboring power to meddle with the affairs of its interior.  Sweden hath already felt the effects of the Czarina’s calling herself Guarantee of its present form of government, in consequence of the treaty of Neustadt, confirmed afterward by that of Abo; though, in truth, that guarantee was rather a provision against Russia’s attempting to alter the then new established form of government in Sweden, than any right given to Russia to hinder the Swedes from establishing what form of government they pleased.  Read them both, if you can get them.  Adieu.

LETTER CLXIV

London, April 73, O. S. 1752

My dear friend:  I receive this moment your letter of the 19th, N. S., with the inclosed pieces relative to the present dispute between the King and the parliament.  I shall return them by Lord Huntingdon, whom you will soon see at Paris, and who will likewise carry you the piece, which I forgot in making up the packet I sent you by the Spanish Ambassador.  The representation of the parliament is very well drawn, ’suaviter in modo, fortiter in re’.  They tell the King very respectfully, that, in a certain case, which they should think it criminal To suppose, they would not obey him.  This hath a tendency to what we call here revolution principles.  I do not know what the Lord’s anointed, his vicegerent upon earth, divinely appointed by him, and accountable to none but him for his actions, will either think or do, upon these symptoms of reason and good sense, which seem to be breaking out all over France:  but this I foresee, that, before the end of this century, the trade of both king and priest will not be half so good a one as it has been.  Du Clos, in his “Reflections,” hath observed, and very truly, ’qu’il y a un germe de raison qui commence a se developper en France’;—­a developpement that must prove fatal to Regal and Papal pretensions.  Prudence may, in many cases, recommend an occasional submission to either; but when that ignorance, upon which an implicit faith in both could only be founded, is once removed, God’s Vicegerent, and Christ’s Vicar, will only be obeyed and believed, as far as what the one orders, and the other says, is conformable to reason and to truth.

I am very glad (to use a vulgar expression) that You make as if you were not well, though you really are; I am sure it is the likeliest way to keep so.  Pray leave off entirely your greasy, heavy pastry, fat creams, and indigestible dumplings; and then you need not confine yourself to white meats, which I do not take to be one jot wholesomer than beef, mutton, and partridge.