see them dead first, lest they should play me a trick, and be hobbling to Buckingham-house, while I am shivering and waiting for them on the banks of Lethe. Adieu! Yours,

HORATIUS.

TO THE EARL OF HERTFORD.

Arlington Street, Nov. 25, 1763.

You tell me, my dear lord, in a letter I have this moment received from you, that you have had a comfortable one from me; I fear it was not the last: you will not have been fond of your brother's voting against the court. Since that, he has been told by different channels that they think of taking away regiments from opposers. He heard it, as he would the wind whistle while in the shape of a threat, he treats it with contempt; if put into execution, his scorn would subside into indifference. You know he has but one object

doing what is right; the rest may betide as it will. One or two of the ministers,1 who are honest men, would, I have reason to believe, be heartily concerned to have such measures adopted; but they are not directors. The little favour they possess, and the desperateness of their situation, oblige them to swallow many things they disapprove, and which ruin their character with the nation; while others, who have no character to lose, and whose situation is no less desperate, care not what inconveniences they bring on their master, nor what confusion on their country, in which they can never prosper, except when it is convulsed. The nation, indeed, seems thoroughly sensible of this truth. They are unpopular beyond conception: even of those that vote with them there are numbers that express their aversion without reserve. Indeed, on Wednesday, the 23rd, this went farther: we were to debate the great point of privilege: Wilbraham2 objected,

1 There is reason to think that at this moment Mr. Grenville and Lord Halifax were those to whom Mr. Walpole gave credit for honest intentions and a disposition to moderate and conciliate. This opinion, though probably correct, Walpole soon changed, as to Mr. Grenville.-C.

2 Randle Wilbraham, LL.D. a barrister, deputy steward of the University of Oxford, and member for Newton, in Lancashire.-E.

As we

that Wilkes was involved in it, and ought to be present. On this, though, as you see, a question of slight moment, fiftyseven left them at once: they were but 243 to 166.1 had sat, however, till eight at night, the debate was postponed to next day. Mr. Pitt, who had a fever and the gout, came on crutches, and wrapped in flannels: so he did yesterday, but was obliged to retire at ten at night, after making a speech of an hour and fifty minutes; the worst, I think, I ever heard him make in my life. For our parts, we sat till within ten minutes of two in the morning: yet we had but few speeches, all were so long. Hussey, solicitor to the Princess of Wales, was against the court, and spoke with great spirit, and true Whig spirit. Charles Yorke3 shone exceedingly. He had spoke and voted with us the night before; but now maintained his opinion against Pratt's.* It was a most able and learned performance, and the latter part, which was oratoric, uncommonly beautiful and eloquent. You find I don't let partiality to the Whig cause blind my judgment. That speech was certainly the masterpiece of the day. Norton would not have made a figure, even if Charles Yorke had not appeared; but giving way to his natural brutality, he got into an ugly scrape. Having so little delicacy or decency as to mention a cause in which he had prosecuted Sir John Rushout5 (who sat just under him) for perjury,

The question was, "That privilege of Parliament does not extend to the case of writing and publishing seditious libels, nor ought to be allowed to obstruct the ordinary course of the laws in the speedy and effectual prosecution of so heinous and dangerous an offence."-C.

2 Richard Hussey, member for St. Mawes. He was counsel to the navy, as well as solicitor to the Queen, not, as Mr. Walpole says, to the Princess. He was afterwards her Majesty's attorney-general.-C.

3 Charles Yorke, second son of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. He had been attorney-general, but resigned on the 31st of October. He agreed with the ministry on the question of privilege, but differed from them on general warrants. This last difference may have accelerated his resignation; but the event itself had been determined on, ever since the failure of a negociation which took place towards the end of the preceding August, through Mr. Pitt and Lord Hardwicke, to form a new administration on a Whig basis.-C.

Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, afterwards Lord Camden. He had discharged Wilkes out of confinement on the ground of privilege.-E.

Sir John Rushout, of Northwick, the fourth baronet. He had sat

the tough old knight (who had been honourably acquitted of the charge) gave the House an account of the affair; and then added, "I was assured the prosecution was set on foot by that honest gentleman; I hope I don't call him out of his name and that it was in revenge for my having opposed him in an election." Norton denied the charge, upon his honour, which did not seem to persuade everybody. Immediately after this we had another episode. Rigby,1 totally unprovoked either by anything said or by the complexion of the day, which was grave and argumentative, fell upon Lord Temple, and described his behaviour on the commitment of Wilkes. James Grenville, who sat behind him, rose in all the acrimony of resentment: drew a very favourable picture of his brother, and then one of Rigby, conjuring up the bitterest words, epithets, and circumstances that he could amass together: told him how interested he was, and how ignorant: painted his journey to Ireland to get a lawplace, for which he was so unqualified; and concluded with affirming he had fled from thence to avoid the vengeance of the people. The passive Speaker suffered both painters to finish their works, and would have let them carry their colours and brushes into Hyde-park the next morning, if other people had not represented the necessity of demanding their paroles that it should go no farther. They were both unwilling to rise: Rigby did at last, and put an end to it with humour3 and

in ten Parliaments; in the three first for Malmsbury, and in the rest for Evesham. He had been a violent politician in Sir Robert Walpole's administration. See vol. i. p. 141.-E.

1 The Right Hon. Richard Rigby, master of the rolls in Ireland, afterwards paymaster of the forces: a statesman of the second class, and a bon vivant of the first. Mr. Rigby was at one time a chief friend and favourite of Mr. Walpole's, but became involved in Mr. Walpole's dislike to the Duke of Bedford, to whom Mr. Rigby was sincerely and constantly attached, and over whom he was supposed to have great influence.-C.

2 Fourth brother of Lord Temple and Mr. George Grenville; father of Lord Glastonbury.-E.

Lady Suffolk, in a letter to the Earl of Buckingham, of the 29th of November, says, "Jemmy Grenville and Mr. Rigby were so violent against each other, one in his manner of treating Lord Temple, who was in the House, and the brother in his justification of his brother, that the House was obliged to interfere to prevent mischief. Lord Temple comes

VOL. IV.

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good-humour. The numbers were 258 to 133. The best speech of all those that were not spoken was Charles Townshend's.1 He has for some time been informing the world that for the last three months he had constantly employed six clerks to search and transcribe records, journals, precedents, &c. The production of all this mountain of matter was a mouse, and that mouse still-born: he has voted with us, but never uttered a word.

We shall now repose for some time; at least I am sure I shall. It has been hard service; and nothing but a Whig point of this magnitude could easily have carried me to the House at all, of which I have so long been sick. Wilkes will live, but is not likely to be in a situation to come forth for some time. The blasphemous book has fallen ten times. heavier on Sandwich's own head than on Wilkes's: it has brought forth such a catalogue of anecdotes as is incredible! Lord Hardwicke fluctuates between life and death. Lord Effingham is dead suddenly, and Lord Cantelupe has got his troop.

These are all our news; I am glad yours go on so smoothly. I take care to do you justice at M. de Guerchy's for all the justice you do to France, and particularly to the house of Nivernois. D'Eon3 is here still: I know nothing more of him

to me; but politics is the bane of friendship, and when personal resentments join, the man becomes another creature."-E.

As Mr. Walpole seems to impute Mr. Charles Townshend's silence on the question of privilege to fickleness, or some worse cause, it is but just to state that he never quite approved that question. This will be seen from the following extract from one of his confidential letters to Dr. Brocklesby, written two months before Parliament met:-" You know I never approved of No. 45, or engaged in any of the consequential measures. As to the question of privilege, it is an intricate matter. The authorities are contradictory, and the distinctions to be reasonably made on the precedents are plausible and endless." Mr. Townshend gave a good deal of further consideration to the subject, and his silence in the debate only proves that his first impressions were confirmed. Mr. Burke's beautiful, but, perhaps, too favourable character of Charles Townshend will immortalize the writer and the subject.-C.

2 John, afterwards second Earl of Delawarr, vice-chamberlain to the Queen.-E.

3 This singular person had been secretary to the Duke de Nivernois's embassy, and in the interval between that ambassador's departure and the arrival of M. de Guerchy, the French mission to our court devolved upon him. This honour, as Mr. Walpole intimates, seems to have

but that the honour of having a hand in the peace overset his poor brain. This was evident on the fatal night at Lord Halifax's: when they told him his behaviour was a breach of the peace, he was quite distracted, thinking it was the peace between his country and this.

Our operas begin to-morrow. The Duchess of Grafton is come for a fortnight only. My compliments to the embassadress, and all your court.

TO THE EARL OF HERTFORD.

Arlington Street, Dec. 2, 1763.

I HAVE been expecting a letter all day, as Friday is the day I have generally received a letter from you, but it is not

turned his head, and he was so absurdly exasperated at being superseded by M. de Guerchy, that he refused to deliver his letters of recall, set his court at defiance, and published a volume of libels on M. de Guerchy and the French ministers. As he persisted in withholding the letters of recall, the two courts were obliged to notify in the London Gazette that his mission was at an end; and the French government desired that he might be given up to them. This, of course, could not be done; but he was proceeded against by criminal information, and finally convicted of the libels against M. de Guerchy. D'Eon asserted, that the French ministry had a design to carry him off privately; and it has been said that he was apprised of this scheme by Louis XV, who, it seems, had entertained some kind of secret and extra-official communication with this adventurer. He afterwards continued in obscurity till 1777, when the public was astonished by the trial of an action before Lord Mansfield, for money lost on a wager respecting his sex. On that trial it seemed proved beyond all doubt, that the person was a female. Proceedings in the Parliament of Paris had a similar result, and the soldier and the minister was condemned to wear woman's attire, which D'Eon did for many years. He emigrated at the revolution, and died in London in May 1810. On examination, after death, the body proved to be that of a male. This circumstance, attested by the most respectable authorities, is so strongly at variance with all the former evidence, that the French biographers have been induced to doubt whether the original Chevalier D'Eon and the person who died in 1810 were the same, and they even endeavour to show that the real person, the Chevalière, as they term it, died in 1790; but we cannot admit this solution of the difficulty, for one, at least, of the surgeons who examined the body in 1810, had known D'Eon in his female habiliments, and he had for ten years lived unquestioned under the name of D'Eon.-C.

On the 26th of October, D'Eon, meeting M. de Guerchy and a M. de Vergy at Lord Halifax's, in Great George-street, burst out into such violence on some observation made by De Vergy, that it became necessary to call in the guard. His whole behaviour in this affair looks like insanity.-C.

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