ave made observations in plenty
on the gout: yes, yes, I know its ways and its jesuitic evasions. I beg
its pardon, it is a better soul than it appears to be; it is we that
misuse it: if it does not appear with all its credentials, we take it
for something else, and attempt to cure it. Being a remedy, and not a
disease, it will not be cured; and it is better to let it have its way.
If it is content to act the personage of a cough, pray humour it: it
will prolong your life, if you do not contradict it and fling it
somewhere else.

The Administration has received a total defeat in Ireland, which has
probably saved us another civil war.[1] Don't wonder that I am
continually recollecting my father's _Quieta non movere_. I have never
seen that maxim violated with impunity. They say, that in town a change
in the Ministry is expected. I am not of that opinion; but, indeed,
nobody can be more ignorant than I. I see nobody here but people
attached to the Court, and who, however, know no more than I do; and if
I did see any of the other side, they would not be able to give me
better information; nor am I curious.

[Footnote 1: In the session of 1785 Grattan opposed a body of
"resolutions" calculated to relieve the distress of the Irish
manufacturers, and altogether to emancipate the trade and commerce of
Ireland from many mischievous restrictions which had hitherto restrained
their progress. Lord Stanhope, in his "Life of Pitt," i. 273, quotes a
description of Grattan's speech as "a display of perhaps the most
beautiful eloquence ever heard, but seditious and inflammatory to a
degree hardly credible;" and he so far prevailed, that in the Irish
House of Commons the resolutions were only carried by a majority of
twenty-nine--one so small, that the Duke of Rutland, the
Lord-Lieutenant, felt it safer to withdraw them.]

A stranger event than a revolution in politics has happened at Paris.
The Cardinal de Rohan is committed to the Bastile for forging the
Queen's hand to obtain a collar of diamonds;[1] I know no more of the
story: but, as he is very gallant, it is guessed (_here_ I mean) that it
was a present for some woman. These circumstances are little Apostolic,
and will not prop the falling Church of Rome. They used to forge
donations and decretals. This is a new manoeuvre. Nor were Cardinals
wont to be treated so cavalierly for peccadilloes. The House of Rohan is
under a cloud: his Eminence's cousin, the Prince of Guemene,[2]