onfidence in their professions. The character
drawn by Lord Malmesbury of the King of Prussia--which the reader will
find confirmed in the subsequent communications of Mr. Grenville--shows
how little reliance, under any circumstances, could be placed on His
Majesty's co-operation.

MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE TO LORD GRENVILLE.

(Private.) Vienna, Sept. 22nd, 1794.
MY DEAREST BROTHER,

The course of this last week has been employed--as you will have
seen from our despatch--in very long, but fruitless arguments on
our parts. The proposal which we send to you, has no other
recommendation than that of its having been strenuously resisted
by us, and steadily persisted in by them. If the fact really was,
as they are disposed to consider it, that England--at no risk and
no expense--could, in the shape of this guarantee, furnish means to
Austria, without which they must consider themselves as beat, and
act too under that impression, to their own certain ruin, and to
the great probable danger of Holland; if, I say, all this mischief
could be prevented without any real expense to England, the
question would seem to me very different from what it now is. But,
I confess, that I have not been able to make out of their
conversation on this subject any of that security on these points
which they must insist upon. They say, provision can be made by
which the interest of this money can be punctually secured, to be
paid strictly when due to the commissaries of the English army, or
any other persons appointed to receive it; yet what those
provisions are which provide for that security, I do not make out,
nor do they seem able to describe. I state to them that Mr. Pitt
must find ways and means for the payment of the interest of this
loan, which must increase the first shape of our annual expenses,
whether they are afterwards honestly repaid or not; but they
maintain that M. Desardroui can settle this somehow or other,
though how they have not by any means explained; perhaps M.
Desardroui has been more fortunate with Mr. Pitt.

One considerable difficulty in regard to this proposition seems to
be the influence which this loan might have upon their wish to
regain the Low Countries--a wish which we already think too weak in
their minds, and which would probably become weaker from