I have said our affairs in North America went ill; it is very true. About this time came letters from the Earl of Loudun, the Commander-in-Chief there, who said, he found the French were 21,000 strong; he had not so many; could not attack Louisbourg; should return to Halifax. Admiral Holbourn, one of the sternest condemners of Byng, wrote at the same time, that he having but seventeen ships, and the French nineteen, he dared not attack them. These disappointments gave great disgust. Lord Loudun had been selected by the Duke and Fox for this command, and our expectations had been raised high of what he would perform. Here was another summer lost! Pitt expressed himself with great vehemence against the Earl--and we naturally have too lofty ideas of our naval strength to suppose that seventeen of our ships are not a match for any nineteen others. At home there were great disturbances on the new Militia Bill. Lord Hardwicke and the Lords, meaning to defeat it, had clogged it with impracticabilities, absurdities, and hardships; particularly by obliging every poor man to pay ten pounds, or find a substitute, or go for a soldier; and yet he would be liable to serve again at the end of three years. This was a tax of above three pounds a year. Nor was any fund provided for the expenses of carrying the Act into execution. These objections gave sufficient handle to the disaffected to decry the system. The Tory gentlemen in particular, apprehending that the Whigs would acquire influence in their counties by the articles of clothing, &c., used their utmost endeavours to prepossess the country against the Bill. They inculcated into the people a belief that they would be trepanned to Gibraltar, like the two Somersetshire regiments that I formerly mentioned; and that whoever should give in his name, would to all intents and purposes become a soldier for life.