LETTER XXIII.

Gray's Inn, July 16, 1782. Your letter of the 29th of June left me, my dear Roget, in very anxious suspense about the fate of Geneva, The news I have since heard of the city's opening its gates has relieved my mind from many of the horrors which I began to paint to myself; but I still wait with impatience for the circumstantial account of this event, which I hope you have sent me, before I determine with myself whether to rejoice even at the restoration of peace, and the sparing of many precious lives.

The news I have to send you from hence is not of a nature to afford you any consolation for the misfortunes of Geneva. The fair prospect which the change of the ministry opened to us is at present very much overcast. No doubt, you have heard of the death of the Marquis of Rockingham, and of the unhappy division among our Ministers which followed that event. Fox, Burke, Lord John Cavendish, and Lee the Solicitor-General, have all resigned; and Keppel, it is expected, will very shortly follow their example. On the first day of the Parliament's meeting after this political schism, the expectation that Fox would explain the motives of the step he had taken drew an uncommon crowd to the House of Commons. I was fortunate enough to be carried along with those who forced their way into the House, so that you may depend on the account I send you.

The business began by Mr. Coke, a very independent county member, moving a vote of censure against the Ministry for having granted a pension of 32001. a-year to Colonel Barré, which is to take place whenever he shall be out of office; a pension which has been hurried through the House with unusual expedition, that it might be beforehand with the Bill for the Reform of the Civil List Expenditure, because that Bill provides that no pension shall be granted for more than 3007. a-year, and that all the pensions in any one year shall not amount to more

than 6007. This very culpable measure (for as such I must consider it) was but weakly defended by an exaggerated representation of the great services which Colonel Barré has rendered his country, and by an enumeration of the honourable and lucrative employments of which the persecution of the late ministry deprived him; and it was very soon quite forgotten in the more important discussion which the debate produced. For, when a member of the late administration drew a comparison between them and their successors, each being, as he pretended, alike eager to enrich their friends, and alike disunited in opinion, Fox rose and denied that it was true that he and his friends, when in opposition, had ever blamed any of the late ministers for differing in opinion from their colleagues, but said that they had blamed those who, though divided in opinion and disapproving the political system they saw adopted, were still mean enough to continue in place, and, through the criminal dread of losing the emoluments of office, lent their name and authority to measures which they knew threatened inevitable destruction to their country; that, for himself, he disdained such conduct, and no sooner had he seen the political system of the last ministry likely to be revived by the present, than he had resigned. This called up General Conway to declare that he saw no symptoms of any renewal by the present administration of the ancient system; he said that he understood the principles upon which the present administration had come into place to be these:-1. That the independence of America should be made the basis of a peace. 2. That economy should be observed in every department of the State. 3. That the influence of the Crown should be diminished. 4. That Ireland's dependence on the British Parliament should be preserved inviolate, as it had lately been established. These, he said, he believed to be the political principles of the whole administration; he was sure they were his own; he never would forsake them; and the moment he saw them abandoned by his present colleagues he would stand forth, he pledged himself, as one of the warmest members of opposition. What were Mr. Fox's motives for resigning, Ge

neral Conway said, he did not know. The opinion he entertained about the necessity of making America independent differed so little from the sentiments of other members of the Council, that to himself it appeared to be only a subtle distinction, merely a shade of difference in opinion.

This declaration led Fox into a general explanation of his conduct in a speech an hour and a half long, delivered with more than his usual eloquence. The sum of what he said is shortly this: that his opinions have been overruled at the Council on several subjects, particularly respecting the independence of America. What the difference exactly consisted in he did not explain, because, he said, that if he were to speak without reserve, it would be said that he had transported to America suspicions to which the Americans had before been strangers, and made them more exacting in their demands than they would otherwise have been. He declared that he should not be surprised to see the war revived in America on its original plan. As to what Conway had laid down as the principles of the administration, they were principles which he had never heard of before, and which, if really adopted by the Ministry, had been adopted since he had retired, and justified his resignation; for they showed that he had much more weight at the Council out of administration than in it. He then mentioned the backwardness of the Ministry to correct and punish the abuses and peculations that have been committed in the East Indies; and said that, finding his opinion always overruled at the Council table, he had formerly signified to his colleagues, before the death of Lord Rockingham, that he should resign; a step which he would have taken immediately, had he not feared it might affect the declining health of that nobleman. But when Lord Rockingham died, and Lord Shelburne was made First Lord of the Treasury, he was then confirmed in his resolution, and immediately resigned. Since that promotion, he said, the administration was no longer that which the Parliament and the nation had brought in; that, for himself, he had not the least confidence in the present administration; and that he had, as

was his duty, resigned: that he had made a very great sacrifice that he did not affect such a stoic indifference for what all the rest of the world earnestly aspired to as to pretend that he had, without regret, resigned high distinctions of fortune, power, honour, and glory; but he did not hesitate a moment to give up all these advantages, and, what he prized above them all, near political connexion with those he was most united to by blood and affection (meaning the Duke of Richmond, who stays in), rather than submit to the treachery and infamy of continuing in office, and patronising by his name an administration and its measures which in his conscience he disapproved, and believed dangerous and fatal to the country. He then prophesied that all the real friends of the constitution and of the people would soon be in opposition again, and that Lord Shelburne would be in administration with all the old ministers.

Burke spoke against the appointment of the First Lord of the Treasury. He exclaimed with uncommon warmth (uncommon rage I should rather say), that he had no confidence in the administration, constituted as it now was; that he saw in them, indeed, "satis eloquentiæ sed sapientiæ parum ;" that in his soul he believed the Government was more safely intrusted to the hands of the late ministry; that the country was sold, betrayed, and ruined; that his own conduct in resigning could not appear interested, for it was certainly most prejudicial to his fortune, most adverse and repugnant to his nature; that his disposition was an attachment to business, a desire to exert his little talents to the utmost for his country, to promote the public good, and assist in the public business; that, by a strange fatality, he had been doomed to pass his days in opposition, and now, after three months spent in a manner congenial to his nature, he found himself condemned to pursue, during the remainder of his life, the same unprofitable course that he had formerly taken.

William Pitt answered Burke and Fox in severe terms; said that their great talents ought to be considered at this time as public property, and that to withhold their assistance from the public at a time when it stood so much in

need of them was a species of treachery. To him, he said, the dispute between the Ministers appeared to be only a contest for power.

The new promotions are as follows:-Lord Shelburne, First Lord of the Treasury; William Pitt, Chancellor of the Exchequer ; Thomas Townshend, and Lord Grantham, who was lately ambassador at Madrid, Secretaries of State; Sir George Young, Secretary at War.

The Americans have refused to enter into any separate negotiation, so that peace seems much more distant than we hoped. To this bad news must be added the loss of the Bahama Islands. But let us quit this ungrateful subject. Adieu. Love to our dear Kitty.

S. R.

LETTER XXIV.

Gray's Inn, July 26, 1782.

I am not to expect then, my dear Roget, any more letters from you on the melancholy subject of Geneva. The few words which my dear sister inclosed for me in her last letter, too fully confirm all the fatal intelligence we had before received. The warm interest which you know I took in the cause of your fellow-citizens will have enabled you to conceive the concern I feel at the issue of their affairs. I lament it, too, from a more general consideration; for I do not doubt that the conduct of the pretended patriots of Geneva will be remembered hereafter by the advocates for arbitrary power; who, when they find the arguments by which the people's cause is defended unanswerable, betake themselves to an attack upon its defenders, and triumph in showing the insincerity and selfishness of seditious demagogues. Thus are the people alike the victims of the treachery of their pretended friends and of the tyranny of their open enemies. I am less astonished at the want of public virtue and patriotism, which has appeared in the chiefs of the Représentants, than at their folly and inattention to their private interests. For, admitting that they were careless about