TO SIR HORACE MANN.

BERKELEY SQUARE, Jan. 13, 1780.

In consequence of my last, it is right to make you easy, and tell you that I think we shall not have a Dutch war; at least, nobody seems to expect it.  What excuses we have made, I do not know; but I imagine the Hollanders are glad to gain by both sides, and glad not to be forced to quarrel with either.

What might have been expected much sooner, appears at last ­a good deal of discontent; but chiefly where it was not much expected.  The country gentlemen, after encouraging the Court to war with America, now, not very decently, are angry at the expense.  As they have long seen the profusion, it would have been happy had they murmured sooner.  Very serious associations are forming in many counties; and orders, under the title of petitions, coming to Parliament for correcting abuses.  They talk of the waste of money; are silent on the thousands of lives that have been sacrificed ­but when are human lives counted by any side?

The French, who may measure with us in folly, and have exceeded us in ridiculous boasts, have been extravagant in their reception of D’Estaing, who has shown nothing but madness and incapacity.  How the northern monarchs, who have at least exhibited talents for war and politics, must despise the last campaign of England and France!

I am once more got abroad, but more pleased to be able to do so, than charmed with anything I have to do.  Having outlived the glory and felicity of my country, I carry that reflection with me wherever I go.  Last night, at Strawberry Hill, I took up, to divert my thoughts, a volume of letters to Swift from Bolingbroke, Bathurst, and Gay; and what was there but lamentations on the ruin of England, in that era of its prosperity and peace, from wretches who thought their own want of power a proof that their country was undone!  Oh, my father! twenty years of peace, and credit, and happiness, and liberty, were punishments to rascals who weighed everything in the scales of self?  It was to the honour of Pope, that, though leagued with such a crew, and though an idolater of their archfiend Bolingbroke and in awe of the malignant Swift, he never gave in to their venomous railings; railings against a man who, in twenty years, never attempted a stretch of power, did nothing but the common business of administration, and by that temperance and steady virtue, and unalterable good-humour and superior wisdom, baffled all the efforts of faction, and annihilated the falsely boasted abilities of Bolingbroke, which now appear as moderate as his character was in every light detestable.  But, alas! that retrospect doubled my chagrin instead of diverting it.  I soon forgot an impotent cabal of mock-patriots; but the scene they vainly sought to disturb rushed on my mind, and, like Hamlet on the sight of Yorick’s skull, I recollected the prosperity of Denmark when my father ruled, and compared it with the present moment!  I look about for a Sir Robert Walpole; but where is he to be found?

This is not a letter, but a codicil to my last.  You will soon probably have news enough ­yet appearances are not always pregnancies.  When there are more follies in a nation than principles and system, they counteract one another, and sometimes, as has just happened in Ireland, are composed pulveris exigui jactu.  I sum up my wishes in that for peace:  but we are not satisfied with persecuting America, though the mischief has recoiled on ourselves; nor France with wounding us, though with little other cause for exultation, and with signal mischief to her own trade, and with heavy loss of seamen; not to mention how her armies are shrunk to raise her marine, a sacrifice she will one day rue, when the disciplined hosts of Goths and Huns begin to cast an eye southward.  But I seem to choose to read futurity, because I am not likely to see it:  indeed I am most rational when I say to myself, What is all this to me?  My thread is almost spun! almost all my business here is to bear pain with patience, and to be thankful for intervals of ease.  Though Emperors and Kings may torment mankind, they will not disturb my bedchamber; and so I bid them and you good-night!

P.S. ­I have made use of a term in this letter, which I retract, having bestowed a title on the captains and subalterns which was due only to the colonel, and not enough for his dignity.  Bolingbroke was more than a rascal ­he was a villain.  Bathurst, I believe, was not a dishonest man, more than he was prejudiced by party against one of the honestest and best of men.  Gay was a simple poor soul, intoxicated by the friendship of men of genius, and who thought they must be good who condescended to admire him.  Swift was a wild beast, who baited and worried all mankind almost, because his intolerable arrogance, vanity, pride, and ambition were disappointed; he abused Lady Suffolk, who tried and wished to raise him, only because she had not power to do so:  and one is sure that a man who could deify that silly woman Queen Anne, would have been more profuse of incense to Queen Caroline, who had sense, if the Court he paid to her had been crowned with success.  Such were the men who wrote of virtue to one another; and even that mean, exploded miser, Lord Bath, presumed to talk of virtue too!