BATH,November 13,1762.
MY DEAR FRIEND:I have received your letter,and believe that your preliminaries are very near the mark;and,upon that supposition,I think we have made a tolerable good bargain with Spain;at least full as good as I expected,and almost as good as I wished,though I do not believe that we have got ALL Florida;but if we have St.Augustin,I suppose that,by the figure of 'pars pro toto',will be called all Florida.We have by no means made so good a bargain with France;for,in truth,what do we get by it,except Canada,with a very proper boundary of the river Mississippi!and that is all.As for the restrictions upon the French fishery in Newfoundland,they are very well 'per la predica',and for the Commissary whom we shall employ:for he will have a good salary from hence,to see that those restrictions are complied with;and the French will double that salary,that he may allow them all to be broken through.
It is plain to me,that the French fishery will be exactly what it was before the war.
The three Leeward islands,which the French yield to us,are not,all together,worth half so much as that of St.Lucia,which we give up to them.Senegal is not worth one quarter of Goree.The restrictions of the French in the East Indies are as absurd and impracticable as those of Newfoundland;and you will live to see the French trade to the East Indies,just as they did before the war.But after all I have said,the articles are as good as I expected with France,when I considered that no one single person who carried on this negotiation on our parts was ever concerned or consulted in any negotiation before.Upon the whole,then,the acquisition of Canada has cost us fourscore millions sterling.I am convinced we might have kept Guadaloupe,if our negotiators had known how to have gone about it.
His most faithful Majesty of Portugal is the best off of anybody in this,transaction,for he saves his kingdom by it,and has not laid out one moidore in defense of it.Spain,thank God,in some measure,'paye les pots cassis';for,besides St.Augustin,logwood,etc.,it has lost at least four millions sterling,in money,ships,etc.
Harte is here,who tells me he has been at this place these three years,excepting some few excursions to his sister;he looks ill,and laments that he has frequent fits of the yellow jaundice.He complains of his not having heard from you these four years;you should write to him.
These waters have done me a great deal of good,though I drink but two-thirds of a pint in the whole day,which is less than the soberest of my countrymen drink of claret at every meal.
I should naturally think,as you do,that this session will be a stormy one,that is,if Mr.Pitt takes an active part;but if he is pleased,as the Ministers say,there is no other AEolus to blow a storm.The Dukes of Cumberland,Newcastle,and Devonshire,have no better troops to attack with than the militia;but Pitt alone is ipse agmen.God bless you!