Calais to Paris, by laying out my journeys at the rate of travelling in England, thirty miles a-day; and did not find but that I could have gone in a third of the time! I shall not be such a snail the next time. It is said that, at Lord Tavistock's return, he is to decide whom he will marry. Is it true that the Choiseuls totter, and that the Broglios are to succeed; or is there a Charles Townshend at Versailles? Adieu! my dear lord.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, eight o'clock,
April 21, 1764.

I WRITE to you with a very bad head-ache; I have passed a night, for which George Grenville and the Duke of Bedford shall pass many an uneasy one! Notwithstanding I heard from everybody I met, that your regiment, as well as bedchamber, were taken away, I would not believe it, till last night the Duchess of Grafton told me, that the night before the Duchess of Bedford said to her, “Are not you very sorry for poor Mr. Conway? He has lost everything." When the Witch of Endor pities, one knows she has raised the devil.

I am come hither alone to put my thoughts into some order, and to avoid showing the first sallies of my resentment, which I know you would disapprove; nor does it become your friend to rail. My anger shall be a little more manly, and the plan of my revenge a little deeper laid than in peevish bons-mots. You shall judge of my indignation by its duration.

In the mean time, let me beg you, in the most earnest and most sincere of all professions, to suffer me to make your loss as light as it is in my power to make it: I have six thousand pounds in the funds; accept all, or what part you want. Do not imagine I will be put off with a refusal.

The retrenchment of my expenses, which I shall from this hour commence, will convince you that I mean to re-place your fortune as far as I can. When I thought you did not want it, I had made another disposition. You have ever been the dearest person to me in the world. You have shown that you deserve to be so. You suffer for your spotless integrity. Can I hesitate a moment to show that there is at least one man who knows how to value you? The new will, which I am going to make, will be a testimonial of my own sense of virtue.

One circumstance has heightened my resentment. If it was not an accident, it deserves to heighten it. The very day on which your dismission was notified, I received an order from the treasury for the payment of what money was due to me there. Is it possible that they could mean to make any distinction between us? Have I separated myself from you? Is there that spot on earth where I can be suspected of having paid court? Have I even left my name at a minister's door since you took your part? If they have dared to hint this, the pen that is now writing to you will bitterly undeceive them.

I am impatient to see the letters you have received, and the answers you have sent. Do you come to town? If you do not, I will come to you to-morrow se'nnight, that is, the 29th. I give no advice on anything, because you are cooler than I am not so cool, I hope, as to be insensible to this outrage, this villany, this injustice! You owe it to your country to labour the extermination of such ministers!

I am so bad a hypocrite, that I am afraid of showing how deeply I feel this. Yet last night I received the account from the Duchess of Grafton with more temper than you believe me capable of: but the agitation of the night disordered me so much, that Lord John Cavendish, who was with me two hours this morning, does not, I believe, take me for a hero. As there are some who I know would enjoy my mortification, and who probably designed I should feel my share of it, I wish to command myself — but that struggle

shall be added to their bill. I saw nobody else before I came away but Legge, who sent for me and wrote the enclosed for you. He would have said more both to you and Lady Ailesbury, but I would not let him, as he is so ill: however, he thinks himself that he shall live. I hope he will! I would not lose a shadow that can haunt these ministers.

I feel for Lady Ailesbury, because I know she feels just as I do and it is not a pleasant sensation. I will say no more, though I could write volumes. Adieu! Yours, as I ever have been and ever will be.

THE HON. H. S. CONWAY TO THE EARL OF

DEAR BROTHER,

HERTFORD.1

Park Place, April 23, 1764.

You will, I think, be much surprised at the extraordinary news I received yesterday, of my total dismission from his Majesty's service, both as groom of the bedchamber and colonel of a regiment. What makes it much stronger is, that I do not hear that any of the many officers who voted with me on the same questions in the minority, are turned out. It seems almost impossible to conceive it should be so, and yet, so I suspect it is; and if it be, it seems to me upon the coolest reflection I am able to give it, the harshest and most unjust treatment ever offered to any man on the like occasion. I never gave a single vote against the ministry, but in the

2

As two of Mr. Walpole's letters, relative to General Conway's dismissal, are wanting, the Editor is glad to be able to supply their place by two letters on the subject from the General himself; and as his dismissal was, both in its principle and consequences, a very important political event, as well as a principal topic in Mr. Walpole's succeeding letters, it is thought that General Conway's own view of it cannot fail to be acceptable.

2 General Conway and Mr. Walpole seem to have taken the argument on too low a scale. Their anxiety seems to have been, to show that the General was not in decided opposition; thereby appearing to admit, that if he had been so, the dismissal would have been justifiable. It is, how

questions on the great constitutional point of the warrants. People are apt to dignify with such titles any question that serves their factious purpose to maintain; but what proved this to be really so, was the great number of persons who voted as I did, having no connexion with the opposition, but determined friends of the ministry in all their conduct, and in the government's service; such as Lord Howe and his brother, and several more. As to the rest, I never gave another vote against the ministry. I refused being of the opposition club, or to attend any one meeting of the kind, from a principle of not entering into a scheme of opposition, but being free to follow my own sentiments upon any question that should arise. On the Cider-act I even voted for the court, in the only vote I gave on that subject; and in another case, relative to the supposed assassination of Wilkes, I even took a part warmly in preventing that silly thing from becoming an object of clamour. So that, undoubtedly, my overt acts have been only voting as any man might from judgment, only in a very extraordinary and serious question of privilege and personal liberty; the avowing my friendship and obligation to some few now in opposition, and my neglecting to pay court to those in the administration; that seemed to me both an honest and an honourable part in my situation, which was something delicate. My poor judgment, at least, could point out no better for me to take, and I enter into so much detail upon this old story, that you may not think I have done anything lightly or passionately which might give just ground for this extraordinary usage; and I must add to the account, that neither in nor out of the House can I, I think, be

ever, clear, from Mr. Walpole's own accounts, that General Conway was considered as not only in opposition, but as one of the most distinguished leaders of the party, and so the public thought: witness the following extract of " a letter" from Albemarle-street to the Cocoa-tree, published about this period:-" Amongst the foremost stands a gallant general, pointed out for supreme command by the unanimous voice of his grateful country: England has a Conway, the powers of whose eloquence, inspired by his zeal for liberty, animated with the fire of true genius, and furnished with a sound knowledge of the constitution, at once entertain, ravish, convince, conquer;-such noble examples are the riches of the present age, the treasure of posterity."-C.

charged with a single act or expression of offence to any one of his Majesty's ministers. This was, at least, a moderate part; and after this, what the ministry should find in their judgment, their justice, or their prudence, from my situation, my conduct, or my character, to single me out and stigmatize me as the proper object of disgrace, or how the merit of so many of my friends who are acting in their support, and whom they might think it possible would feel hurt, did not, in their prudential light, tend to soften the rigour of their aversion towards me, does, I confess, puzzle me. I don't exactly know from what particular quarter the blow comes; but I must think Lord Bute has, at least, a share in it, as, since his return, the countenance of the King, who used to speak to me after all my votes, is visibly altered, and of late he has not spoke to me at all.

So much for my political history: I wish it was as easy to my fortune as it is to my mind in most other respects; but that, too, I must make as easy as I can: it comes unluckily at the end of two German campaigns, which I felt the expense of with a much larger income, and have not yet recovered; ' as, far from having any reward, it was with great difficulty I got the reimbursement of the extraordinary money my last command through Holland cost me, though the States-General had, by a public act, represented my conduct so advantageously to our court; so that on the whole I think no man was ever more contemptuously used, who was not a wretch lost in character and reputation. It requires all the philosophy one can muster, not to show the strongest resentment. I think I have as much as my neighbours, and I shall endeavour to use it; yet not so as to betray quite an unmanly insensibility to such extraordinary provocation. Horace Walpole has, on this occasion, shown that warmth of friendship that you know him capable of, so strongly that I want words to express my sense of it. I have not yet had time to see or

1 On this occasion, Lord Hertford, the Duke of Devonshire, and Mr. Horace Walpole (each without the knowledge of the others) pressed General Conway to accept from them an income equivalent to what he had lost.-C.