LETTER CCXII

Bath, November 4, 1757

My dear friend:  The Sons of Britain, like those of Noah, must cover their parent’s shame as well as they can; for to retrieve its honor is now too late.  One would really think that our ministers and generals were all as drunk as the Patriarch was.  However, in your situation, you must not be Cham; but spread your cloak over our disgrace, as far as it will go.  M——­t calls aloud for a public trial; and in that, and that only, the public agree with him.  There will certainly be one, but of what kind is not yet fixed.  Some are for a parliamentary inquiry, others for a martial one; neither will, in my opinion, discover the true secret; for a secret there most unquestionably is.  Why we stayed six whole days in the island of Aix, mortal cannot imagine; which time the French employed, as it was obvious they would, in assembling their troops in the neighborhood of Rochfort, and making our attempt then really impracticable.  The day after we had taken the island of Aix, your friend, Colonel Wolf, publicly offered to do the business with five hundred men and three ships only.  In all these complicated political machines there are so many wheels, that it is always difficult, and sometimes im possible, to guess which of them gives direction to the whole.  Mr. Pitt is convinced that the principal wheels, or, if you will, the spoke in his wheel, came from Stade.  This is certain, at least that M——­t was the man of confidence with that person.  Whatever be the truth of the case, there is, to be sure, hitherto an ‘hiatus valde deflendus’.

The meeting of the parliament will certainly be very numerous, were it only from curiosity:  but the majority on the side of the Court will, I dare say, be a great one.  The people of the late Captain-general, however inclined to oppose, will be obliged to concur.  Their commissions, which they have no desire to lose, will make them tractable; for those gentlemen, though all men of honor, are of Sosia’s mind, ’que le vrai Amphitrion est celui ou l’on dine’.  The Tories and the city have engaged to support Pitt; the Whigs, the Duke of Newcastle; the independent and the impartial, as you well know, are not worth mentioning.  It is said that the Duke intends to bring the affair of his Convention into parliament, for his own justification; I can hardly believe it; as I cannot conceive that transactions so merely electoral can be proper objects of inquiry or deliberation for a British parliament; and, therefore, should such a motion be made, I presume it will be immediately quashed.  By the commission lately given to Sir John Ligonier, of General and Commander-in-chief of all his Majesty’s forces in Great Britain, the door seems to be not only shut, but bolted, against his Royal Highness’s return; and I have good reason to be convinced that that breach is irreparable.  The reports of changes in the Ministry, I am pretty sure, are idle and groundless.  The Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pitt really agree very well; not, I presume, from any sentimental tenderness for each other, but from a sense that it is their mutual interest:  and, as the late Captain-general’s party is now out of the question, I do not see what should produce the least change.