e 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.

[Footnote 1: "_America_"--the discontents in that country were caused by
Mr. Charles Townshend's policy, who, before his death, had revived Mr.
Grenville's plan of imposing taxes on the Colonies, and by the
perseverance in that policy of Lord North, who succeeded him at the
Exchequer, and who had also been First Lord of the Treasury since the
resignation of the Duke of Grafton.]

We have a new famous Bill,[1] 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....

[Footnote 1: Mr. Grenville's Act had been passed in 1770; but there had
been no General Election since till this year. It altered the course of
proceeding for the trial of election petitions, substituting for the
whole House a Select Committee of fifteen members; but after a time it
was found that it had not secured any greater purity of decision, but
that the votes of the Committee were influenced by considerations of the
interest of the dominant party as entirely as they had been in the days
of Sir R