On the 15th of the following month, came advice of Tortuga, or Turks’ Island, being seized by Count d’Estain. This man had been twice taken prisoner by us in the last war, and both times had forfeited his parole of honour; yet with a laudable clemency had been spared.[10] France had rewarded him with the Order of the Holy Ghost; and he now commanded a squadron in the West Indies, with which he committed this new hostility and infraction of the peace. I saw the importance of the moment, and endeavoured to spirit up addresses against the peace-makers; but languor prevailed, and none of our great Lords could be brought to send directions to their agents for transfusing indignation through their counties. In the meantime the Ministers made representations at Versailles, which, however, despairing of redress, they did not dare to announce in the Gazette till an answer came disavowing D’Estain, and promising to restore the island and pay damages; yet with no mark of displeasure towards their own commander, who, it was not doubted, had acted by direction, both to keep down our stocks, and in revenge for some vessels, which one of our captains had burned at Newfoundland, where they had encroached. The man justified himself by his general orders; nor did the Ministers, though they privately reprimanded him for his zeal, dare to break him; but fearing farther hostilities, four men-of-war were ordered to Newfoundland. Mr. Legge, after languishing some months, died August 23rd. A blow considerable to our party, as he was the only man in it proper, on a change, to have been placed at the head of the House of Commons. His abilities were known and respected; his timidity and time-serving had not been much remarked, but by the few he had been most conversant with; for, being supple and cheerful and never offensive, he had always seemed to loiter behind his party, rather than to desert it. He met death with more manliness and unconcern than could have been expected, as he was not old, was happy, rich, and above the affectation of heroism or philosophy. An old friend visiting him the day before he died, Legge said to him, “Brother sportsman, I used to laugh at your being too heavy for a chase, but now you are come in at the death.” It was not equally sensible and unaffected, that he sent to Mr. Pitt, to acquaint him with his own approaching dissolution, and to exhort him to do his utmost to remove the present Ministers. Legge ought to have known how little Pitt would regard the death-bed admonition of a man for whom living he had little veneration. Legge left behind him, with orders for publication, a relation of his quarrel with Lord Bute, relating to an election for Hampshire. This piece neither hurt the Favourite, nor reflected honour on the deceased. That the former should have meddled in an election, even before his master’s accession to the Crown, could not surprise nor seriously shock any man: nor,