expect that we shall not immediately fall to pieces: nor is any thing I write the least secret, even to a whig footman.
The queen is pretty well at present; but the least disorder she has puts all in alarm; and when it is over we act as if she were immortal. Neither is it possible to persuade people to make any preparations against an evil day. There is a negotiation now in hand, which, I hope, will not be abortive: the States General are willing to declare themselves fully satisfied with the peace and the queen's measures, &c. and that is too popular a matter to slight. It is impossible to tell you whether the prince of Hanover intends to come over or not. I should think the latter, by the accounts I have seen; yet our adversaries continue strenuously to assert otherwise; and very industriously give out, that the lord treasurer is at the bottom: which has given some jealousies not only to his best friends, but to some I shall not name; yet I am confident they do him wrong. This formidable journey is the perpetual subject both of court and coffeehouse chat.
Our mysterious and unconverted ways of proceeding have, as it is natural, taught every body to be refiners, and to reason themselves into a thousand various conjectures. Even I, who converse most with people in power, am not free from this evil: and particularly, I thought myself twenty times in the right, by drawing conclusions very regularly from premises which have proved wholly wrong. I think this, however, to be a plain proof that we act altogether by chance: and that the game, such as it is, plays itself.
