The printers of the London Evening Post and Gazetteer were called before the House of Lords, on a complaint made by the Earl of Marchmont, for printing a letter (written by Wilkes) reflecting on the Earl of Hertford, ambassador at Paris, for employing David Hume the historian as his secretary, and representing the embassy as totally of Scotch complexion. Wilkes, then an outlaw, and in France, had gone to the Earl’s chapel, who treated him civilly, but neither returned his visits nor invited him to dinner, which it was impossible he should do, representing the person of the King so grievously outraged by that libeller. Lord Marchmont proposed to inflict a fine of 100_l._ on each printer. Lord Weymouth said fifty were sufficient; not more had been imposed on a printer of a spurious speech for the King. Lord Temple put them in mind how much himself and the Duke of Cumberland had been abused; and in answer to the Duke of Bedford, who had complained that names were now printed at length, said, that practice had been begun when himself and Mr. Pitt had resigned the last time. The Duke of Richmond said, he remembered that the period in which the Duke of Cumberland had been most traduced, was in the year 1757. Lord Temple and Mr. Pitt were then in power. The truth was, no side had abstained from invectives when out of place. The difference was, that no attempt was made to punish the authors and printers but under the administration of Grenville, Lord Sandwich, and that set. On the 23rd of March appeared one of the most extraordinary books ever published, and though written by a foreigner, and in French, by no means inferior in detraction to the North Britons. It was a large quarto, called _Lettres, Mémoires, et Négotiations particulières du Chevalier d’Eon_, &c.: and contained the history of his employments, troubles, quarrel with Monsieur de Guerchy, and his own wonderfully imprudent and insolent letters to the Duc de Praslin, the second Minister in power at the Court at Versailles. The contempt expressed for the Comte de Guerchy was transcendant; but yet this was not the most reprehensible part of the work. With the most indefensible wantonness, D’Eon had inserted the childishly fond, but friendly letters, of his patron the Duc de Nivernois. With still greater indiscretion, he published others of an intimate friend employed in the office of the Secretary of State at Versailles, in which that friend, in confidence, had familiarly censured his masters: and with the most abominable treachery D’Eon added confidential letters between the Ducs de Nivernois and Praslin, in which, though with goodwill towards _him_, they spoke of their intimate friend Monsieur de Guerchy with much contemptuous pity, which might be excused between such near friends, though never to be pardoned by Guerchy. These letters D’Eon, when trusted with the Duc de Nivernois’s keys, had stolen or copied. To such lengths blind, headstrong revenge had driven the mad,