The King almost sunk under this weight of misfortunes. That country, which with so much patriotism and so little prudence he had made the point in which his whole policy centred--that country now felt all the bitterness of desolation! Hanover, which so long had tasted the felicity of being conjoined to England, was now ravaged in an English quarrel. And unless we will suppose that his Majesty hoped to hire out his Electoral troops to his Crown in a contest which he flattered himself would never be agitated in Germany, one cannot conceive why with such improvident facility he had permitted the Chancellor and Newcastle to bound into a war with France; a war undertaken from some provocation, with no preparation; and discussed with no more solidity, than the mob, whom it was made to captivate, could have employed. The French had aimed at and proceeded to invade our settlements. We returned hostilities with as slight a force as if we had only sent a herald to denounce war. We then seized their ships--and did nothing more; yes, we engaged some German mercenaries, as if the Duke of Newcastle had thought that the Rhine and the Ohio were the same river. Had we, like the French, waved expressions of war, till we had mustered a mighty force in America, where our superiority is exceedingly great; had we increased our Navy before we seized theirs; had we at least imitated their arts as well as their invasions, we might have dictated in the new world, and lived without hostilities in the old. No wonder the King was overwhelmed with the explosion of such calamities and blunders--still he had deserved compassion; had he not shown that, whatever his reflection suggested, his heart had no generous feelings--But of this anon. The Court at Leicester House was very differently employed during these serious transactions. Hanover was lost; in North America our affairs went ill; England itself was in no flourishing condition. How did the Princess occupy the heir of all these domains? She was not Spartan enough to buckle on his armour with her own hands, and send him to save or reconquer what he was to govern. The light of the Gospel has emancipated mothers from such robust sensations. The Prince was instructed to commit the care of the temporal concerns of his subjects to Providence; and therefore, instead of sending men, arms, ammunition to the invaded frontiers of our colonies,[8] with more patriarchal vigilance his Royal Highness sent them an hundred pounds’ worth of Leland’s polemic writings against the Deists. The Princess herself bestowed an annuity of one hundred pounds on a young Scotch[9] clergyman, who having been persecuted by the kirk for writing a tragedy called Douglas, threw himself and his piece on the protection of the Earl of Bute.