I this minute receive your charming long letter of the 11th, and give you a thousand thanks for it.  I wish next Tuesday was past, for Lady Hertford’s sake.  You may depend on my letting you know, if I hear the least rumour in your disfavour.  I shall do so without your orders, for I could not bear to have you traduced and not advertise you to defend yourself.  I have hitherto not heard a syllable; but the newspapers talk of your magnificence, and I approve extremely your intending to support their evidence; for though I do not think it necessary to scatter pearls and diamonds about the streets like their vice-majesties(362), of Ireland, one owes it to one’s self and to the King’s choice to prove it was well made.

The colour given at Paris to Bunbury’s(363) stay in England has been given out here too.  You need not, I think, trouble yourself about that; a majority of three hundred will soon show, that if he was detained, the reason at least no longer subsists.

Hamilton is certainly returning from Ireland.  Lord Shannon’s(364) son is going to marry the Speaker’s daughter, and the Primate has begged to have the honour of Joining their hands.

This letter is wofullv blotted and ill-written, yet I must say it is print compared to your lordship’s.  At first I thought you had forgot that you was not writing to the secretary of state, and had put it into cipher.  Adieu!  I am neither, dead of my fever nor apoplexy, nay, nor of the House of Commons.  I rather think the violent heat of the latter did me good.  Lady Ailesbury was at court yesterday, and benignly received;(365) a circumstance you will not dislike.

P.S.  If I have not told you all you want to know, interrogate me, and I will answer the next post.

(341) Parliament met on the 15th of November.  The public mind was at this moment in a considerable ferment, and the King’s speech invited Parliament “to discourage that licentious spirit which is repugnant to the true principles of liberty and of this happy constitution.”  It was expected that these words would, from their being understood as a direct attack on Mr. Wilkes, have opened a debate on his question, which was then uppermost in every mind; but the opposition were unwilling to put themselves under the disadvantage of opposing the address and of excepting against words, which, in their general meaning were unexceptionable; they, therefore, had recourse to the proceedings so well described in this letter.-C.

(342) He means, that parties were so violent that the members seemed inclined to come to blows.-C.

(343) The King’s speech, which is now read at the house of the minister, to a selection of the friends of government, was formerly read at the Cockpit, and all who chose attended.-C.

(344) “Yet oh, my sons! a father’s words attend; So may the Fates preserve the ears you lend."-E.