TO SIR HORACE MANN.

STRAWBERRY HILL, Oct. 6, 1774.

It would be unlike my attention and punctuality, to see so large an event as an irregular dissolution of Parliament, without taking any notice of it to you.  It happened last Saturday, six months before its natural death, and without the design being known but the Tuesday before, and that by very few persons.  The chief motive is supposed to be the ugly state of North America, and the effects that a cross winter might have on the next elections.  Whatever were the causes, the first consequences, as you may guess, were such a ferment in London as is seldom seen at this dead season of the year.  Couriers, despatches, post-chaises, post-horses, hurrying every way!  Sixty messengers passed through one single turnpike on Friday.  The whole island is by this time in equal agitation; but less wine and money will be shed than have been at any such period for these fifty years.

We have a new famous Bill, devised by the late Mr. Grenville, that has its first operation now; and what changes it may occasion, nobody can yet foresee.  The first symptoms are not favourable to the Court; the great towns are casting off submission, and declaring for popular members.  London, Westminster, Middlesex, seem to have no monarch but Wilkes, who is at the same time pushing for the Mayoralty of London, with hitherto a majority on the poll.  It is strange how this man, like a phoenix, always revives from his embers!  America, I doubt, is still more unpromising.  There are whispers of their having assembled an armed force, and of earnest supplications arrived for succours of men and ships.  A civil war is no trifle; and how we are to suppress or pursue in such a vast region, with a handful of men, I am not an Alexander to guess; and for the fleet, can we put it upon casters and wheel it from Hudson’s Bay to Florida?  But I am an ignorant soul, and neither pretend to knowledge nor foreknowledge.  All I perceive already is, that our Parliaments are subjected to America and India, and must be influenced by their politics; yet I do not believe our senators are more universal than formerly....

In the midst of this combustion, we are in perils by land and water.  It has rained for this month without intermission; there is sea between me and Richmond, and Sunday was se’nnight I was hurried down to Isleworth in the ferry-boat by the violence of the current, and had great difficulty to get to shore.  Our roads are so infested by highwaymen, that it is dangerous stirring out almost by day.  Lady Hertford was attacked on Hounslow Heath at three in the afternoon.  Dr. Eliot was shot at three days ago, without having resisted; and the day before yesterday we were near losing our Prime Minster, Lord North; the robbers shot at the postillion, and wounded the latter.  In short, all the freebooters, that are not in India, have taken to the highway.  The Ladies of the Bedchamber dare not go the Queen at Kew in an evening.  The lane between me and the Thames is the only safe road I know at present, for it is up to the middle of the horses in water.  Next week I shall not venture to London even at noon, for the Middlesex election is to be at Brentford, where the two demagogues, Wilkes and Townshend, oppose each other; and at Richmond there is no crossing the river.  How strange all this must appear to you Florentines; but you may turn to your Machiavelli and Guicciardini, and have some idea of it.  I am the quietest man at present in the whole island; not but I might take some part, if I would.  I was in my garden yesterday, seeing my servants lop some trees; my brewer walked in and pressed me to go to Guildhall for the nomination of members for the county.  I replied, calmly, “Sir, when I would go no more to my own election, you may be very sure I will go to that of nobody else.”  My old tune is,

     Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, &c.

Adieu!

P.S. ­ARLINGTON STREET, 7th.

I am just come to town, and find your letter, with the notification of Lord Cowper’s marriage; I recollect that I ought to be sorry for it, as you will probably lose an old friend.  The approaching death of the Pope will be an event of no consequence.  That old mummery is near its conclusion, at least as a political object.  The history of the latter Popes will be no more read than that of the last Constantinopolitan Emperors.  Wilkes is a more conspicuous personage in modern story than the Pontifex Maximus of Rome.  The poll for Lord Mayor ended last night; he and his late Mayor had above 1,900 votes, and their antagonists not 1,500.  It is strange that the more he is opposed, the more he succeeds!

I don’t know whether Sir W. Duncan’s marriage proved Platonic or not; but I cannot believe that a lady of great birth, and greater pride, quarrels with her family, to marry a Scotch physician for Platonic love, which she might enjoy without marriage.  I remember an admirable bon-mot of George Selwyn; who said, “How often Lady Mary will repeat, with Macbeth, ’Wake, Duncan, with this knocking ­would thou couldst!”