A great majority in both houses is as brave as a mob ducking a pick-pocket.

They flatter themselves they shall terrify the colonies into submission in three months, and are amazed to hear that there is no such probability.

They might as well have excommunicated them, and left it to the devil to put the sentence into execution." (February 18, 1775.) Not only is Walpole's judgment wiser, but the elements of a wise judgment were present to him in a way in which they were not so to Gibbon.

When the latter does attempt a forecast, he shows, as might be expected, as little penetration of the future as appreciation of the present.

Writing from Paris on August 11, 1777, when all French society was ablaze with enthusiasm for America, and the court just on the point of yielding to the current, he is under no immediate apprehensions of a war with France, and "would not be surprised if next summer the French were to lend their cordial assistance to England as the weaker party." The emptiness of his letters as regards home politics perhaps admits of a more favourable explanation, and may be owing to the careful suppression by their editor, Lord Sheffield, of everything of real interest.