assion one might have expected that he would be at least
shrewd and sagacious in his judgments on politics. But he is nothing
of the kind. In his familiar letters he reserves generally a few lines
for parliamentary gossip, amid chat about the weather and family
business. He never approaches to a broad survey of policy, or
expresses serious and settled convictions on home or foreign affairs.
Throughout the American war he never seems to have really made up his
mind on the nature of the struggle, and the momentous issues that it
involved. Favourable news puts him in high spirits, which are promptly
cooled by the announcement of reverses; not that he ever shows any
real anxiety or despondency about the commonwealth. His opinions on
the subject are at the mercy of the last mail. It is disappointing to
find an elegant trifler like Horace Walpole not only far more
discerning in his appreciation of such a crisis, but also far more
patriotically sensitive as to the wisdom of the means of meeting it,
than the historian of Rome. Gibbon's tone often amounts to levity, and
he chronicles the most serious measures with an unconcern really
surprising. "In a few days we stop the ports of New England. I cannot
write volumes: but I am more and more convinced that with firmness all
may go well: yet I sometimes doubt." (February 8, 1775.) "Something
will be done this year; but in the spring the force of the country
will be exerted to the utmost: Scotch Highlanders, Irish Papists,
Hanoverians, Canadians, Indians, &c., will all in various shapes be
employed." (August 1, 1775.) "What think you of the season, of Siberia
is it not? A pleasant campaign in America." (January 29, 1776.) At
precisely the same time the sagacious coxcomb of Strawberry Hill was
writing thus: "The times are indeed very serious. Pacification with
America is not the measure adopted. More regiments are ordered
thither, and to-morrow a plan, I fear equivalent to a declaration of
war, is to be laid before both Houses. They are bold ministers
methinks who do not hesitate on civil war, in which victory may bring
ruin, and disappointment endanger their heads.... Acquisition alone
can make burdens palatable, and in a war with our own colonies we must
inflict instead of acquiring them, and we cannot recover them without
undoing them. I am still to learn wisdom and experience, if these
things are not so." (Letter to Mann, January 25, 1775.) "A war with
our colonies, which is now d