Thursday, May 31.

If you see the papers, you will find that there was a warm debate yesterday on a fresh proposal from Hartley(428) for pacification with America; in which the ministers were roundly reproached with their boasts of the returning zeal of the colonies and which, though it ought by their own accounts to be so much nearer Complete, they could not maintain to be at all effectual; though even yesterday a report was revived of a second victory of Lord Cornwallis.  This debate prevented another on the Marriage-bill, which Charles Fox wants to get repealed, and which he told me he was going to labour.  I mention this from the circumstance of the moment when he told ne so.  I had been to see if Lady Ailesbury was come to town; as I came up St. James’s-street, I saw a cart and porters at Charles’s door; coppers and old chests of drawers loading.  In short, his success at faro has awakened his host of creditors; but unless his bank had swelled to the size of the bank of England, it could not have yielded a sop apiece for each.  Epsom, too, had been unpropitious; and One creditor has actually seized and carried off his goods, which did not seem worth removing.  As I returned full of this scene, whom should I find sauntering by my own door but Charles?  He came up and talked to me at the coach-window, on the Marriage-bill(429) With as much sang-froid as if he knew nothing of what had happened.  I have no admiration for insensibility to one’s own faults, especially when committed out of vanity.  Perhaps the whole philosophy consisted in the commission.  If you could have been as much to blame, the last thing you would bear well would be your own reflections.  The more marvellous Fox’s parts are, the more one is provoked at his follies, which comfort so many rascals and blockheads, and make all that is admirable and amiable in him only matter of regret to those who like him as I do.

I did intend to settle at Strawberry on Sunday; but must return on Thursday, for a party made at Marlborough-house for Princess Amelia.  I am continually tempted to retire entirely; and should, if I did not see how very unfit English tempers are for living quite out of the world.  We grow abominably peevish and severe on others, if we are not constantly rubbed against and polished by them.  I need not name friends and relations of yours and mine as instances.  My prophecy on the short reign of faro is verified already.  The bankers find that all the calculated advantages of the game do not balance pinchbeck parolis and debts of honourable women.  The bankers, I think, might have had a previous and more generous reason, the very bad air of holding a bank:—­but this country is as hardened against the petite morale, as against the greater.—­What should I think of the world if I quitted it entirely?

(428) On the preceding day, Mr. Hartley had moved for leave to bring in a bill to invest the Crown with sufficient power to treat upon the means of restoring peace with the provinces of north America.  It was Negatived by 106 against 72.-E.