in fifty years' experience, I have never seen anything
like. The Stamp-act has proved a most pernicious measure; for, whether it
is repealed or not, which is still very doubtful, it has given such
terror to the Americans, that our trade with them will not be, for some
years, what it used to be; and great numbers of our manufacturers at home
will be turned a starving for want of that employment which our very
profitable trade to America found them: and hunger is always the cause of
tumults and sedition.

As you have escaped a fit of the gout in this severe cold weather, it is
to be hoped you may be entirely free from it, till next winter at least.

P. S. Lord having parted with his wife, now, keeps another w---e, at a
great expense. I fear he is totally undone.

LETTER CCLXXXV

LONDON, March 17, 1766.

MY DEAR FRIEND: You wrong me in thinking me in your debt; for I never
receive a letter of yours, but I answer it by the next post, or the next
but one, at furthest: but I can easily conceive that my two last letters
to you may have been drowned or frozen in their way; for portents and
prodigies of frost, snow, and inundations, have been so frequent this
winter, that they have almost lost their names.

You tell me that you are going to the baths of BADEN; but that puzzles me
a little, so I recommend this letter to the care of Mr. Larpent, to
forward to you; for Baden I take to be the general German word for baths,
and the particular ones are distinguished by some epithet, as Weissbaden,
Carlsbaden, etc. I hope they are not cold baths, which I have a very ill
opinion of, in all arthritic or rheumatic cases; and your case I take to
be a compound of both, but rather more of the latter.

You will probably wonder that I tell you nothing of public matters; upon
which I shall be as secret as Hotspur's gentle Kate, who would not tell
what she did not know; but what is singular, nobody seems to know any
more of them than I do. People gape, stare, conjecture, and refine.
Changes of the Ministry, or in the Ministry at least, are daily reported
and foretold, but of what kind, God only knows. It is also very doubtful
whether Mr. Pitt will come into the Administration or not; the two
present Secretaries are extremely desirous that he should; but the others
think of the horse that called the man to its assistance. I will say
nothing to you about American affairs, because I have not pens, ink, or
paper enough to give you an in