"but now," within a month or so of the old King's death, "there was published, under Lord Hardwicke's countenance, a Tract setting forth the burden and ill policy of our German measures. It was called CONSIDERATIONS ON THE GERMAN WAR; was ably written, and changed many men's minds." This is the famous "Mauduit Pamphlet:"first of those small stones, from the sling of Opposition not obliged to be dormant, which are now beginning to rattle on Pitt's Olympian Dwelling-place,--high really as Olympus, in comparison with others of the kind, but which unluckily is made of GLASS like the rest of them! The slinger of this first resounding little missile, Walpole informs us, was "one Mauduit, formerly a Dissenting Teacher,"--son of a Dissenting Minister in Bermondsey, Ihear, and perhaps himself once a Preacher, but at present concerned with Factorage of Wool on the great scale; got soon afterwards promoted to be Head of the Custom-house in Southampton, so lovely did he seem to Bute and Company. "How agreeable his politics were to the interior of the Court, soon appeared by a place [Southampton Custom-house] being bestowed on him by Lord Bute." A fortunate Mauduit, yet a stupidly tragical; had such a destiny in English History! Hear Walpole a little farther, on Mauduit, and on other things then resonant to Arlington Street in a way of their own.
"TO SIR HORACE MANN [at Florence]:--
"NOVEMBER 14th, 1760 [tenth night after Torgau]. ... We are all in guns and bonfires for an unexpected victory of the King of Prussia over Daun; but as no particulars are yet arrived, there are doubters.""DECEMBER 5th, 1760. I have received the samples of brocadella. ...
I shall send you a curious Pamphlet, the only work I almost ever knew that changed the opinions of many. It is called CONSIDERATIONSON THE PRESENT GERMAN WAR, ["London: Printed for John Wilkie, at the Bible, in St. Paul's Churchyard, 1761," adds my poor Copy (a frugal 12mo, of pp. 144), not adding of what edition.] and is written by a wholesale Woollen-Draper [connected with Wool, in some way; "Factor at Blackwell Hall," if that mean Draper:--and a growing man ever after; came to be "Agent for Massachusetts," on the Boston-TEA occasion, and again did Tracts; was "President of the"--in short, was a conspicuous Vice-President, so let us define him, of The general Anti-Penalty or Life-made-Soft Association, with Cause of civil and religious Liberty all over the World, and such like; and a Mauduit comfortably resonant in that way till he died [Chalmers, BIOG. DICTIONARY; Nichols, LITERARY ANECDOTES;&c. &c.]; but the materials are supposed to be furnished by the faction of the Yorkes. The confirmation of the King of Prussia's victory near Torgau does not prevent the disciples of the Pamphlet from thinking that the best thing which could happen for us would be to have that Monarch's head shot off. [Hear, hear!]--"There are Letters from the Hague [what foolish Letters do fly about, my friend!], that say Daun is dead of his wounds. If he is, I shall begin to believe that the King of Prussia will end successfully at last. [Oh!] It has been the fashion to cry down Daun; but, as much as the King of Prussia may admire himself [does immensely, according to our Selwyn informations], I dare say he would have been glad to be matched with one much more like himself than one so opposite as the Marshal.""JANUARY 2d, i761. The German War is not so popular as you imagine, either in the Closet or in the Nation." [Walpole, Letters to Sir Horace Mann (Lond. 1843), i. 6, 7.]
(Enough, enough.)
The Mauduit Pamphlet, which then produced such an effect, is still to be met in old Collections and on Bookstalls; but produces little save weariness to a modern reader. "Hanover not in real danger,"argues he; "if the French had it, would not they, all Europe ordering them, have to give it up again?" Give it up,--GRATIS, or in return for Canada and Pondicherry, Mauduit's does not say.
Which is an important omission! But Mauduit's grand argument is that of expense; frightful outlay of money, aggravated by ditto mismanagement of same.
A War highly expensive, he says--(and the truth is, Pitt was never stingy of money: "Nearly the one thing we have in any plenty;be frank in use of that, in an Enterprise so ill-provided otherwise, and involving life and death!" thinks Pitt);--"dreadfully expensive," urges Mauduit, and gives some instances of Commissariat moneys signally wasted,--not by Pitt, but by the stupidity of Pitt's War Offices, Commissariat Offices, Offices of all kinds; not to be cured at once by any Pitt:--How magazines of hay were shipped and reshipped, carried hither, thither, up this river, down that (nobody knowing where the war-horses would be that were to eat it); till at length, when it had reached almost the value of bohea tea, the right place of it was found to be Embden (nearest to Britain from the first, had one but known), and not a horse would now taste it, so spoiled was the article; all horses snorted at it, as they would have done at bohea, never so expensive. [Mauduit (towards the end) has a story of that tenor,--particulars not worth verifying.] These things are incident to British warfare; also to Swedish, and to all warfares that have their War Offices in an imaginary state,--state much to be abhorred by every sane creature; but not to be mended all at once by the noblest of men, into whose hands they are suddenly thrust for saving his Nation. Conflagration to be quenched; and your buckets all in hideous leakage, like buckets of the Danaides:--your one course is, ply them, pour with them, such as they are.
