The Duke doubted whether, having put the business into a new train, he could justify concluding it without again consulting the merchants. I persuaded him to despatch a courier to Mr. Conway, to say he would conclude, but not to specify in his public letter the error of the merchants, lest the Court of France should get intelligence, and repent of their facility. With regard to Dunkirk, nothing was to be obtained. Choiseul told the Duke of Richmond that the late Ministers had not been so difficult. “But,” said the Duke, “before I came away, I saw in the Secretary’s office a strong letter to your Court on the subject of Dunkirk.” “True,” said Choiseul, “but it was not written till after Lord Halifax knew he was to be turned out.” This indiscretion flowed from Choiseul’s natural levity, not from any intention of hurting our late Ministers, whose fall he regretted, and on whose complaisance[185] he could better build than on men who had loudly condemned the Peace. Still was France not alarmed while Mr. Pitt remained without power. Their dread of him existed in all its force. To judge of it, one should have seen, as I did, the efficacy of his name to change their countenances and language. One day at dinner with the Duc de Praslin, when Mr. Pitt was accidentally mentioned, the Duc, with visible marks of alarm, asked if Mr. Pitt was coming into place again? And it is true that when any Frenchman gave a loose to their natural presumption before me, I had no occasion but to drop a careless hint that he was likely to be again employed, to strike silence through a whole company.[186] One other point obtained by the new Ministers was a mutual exchange of envoys between England and Prussia, their first intercourse of communication since the war. Mitchell, destined for that embassy, was created a Knight of the Bath.[187] Count Malzahn came hither from Prussia. November the 5th, Lord Camden, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, decided in that court the great cause between Wilkes and the Secretaries of State, in favour of the former.[188] Terrick, Bishop of London, set himself to prosecute mass-houses, with what view I know not; for though noways blameable in his morals, zeal for religion by no means entered into the composition of the man. Ambition, creeping upwards by little intrigues, formed his whole character. Perhaps he thought this activity might be one step to the primacy. He had not much chance under the new dispensation.[189] The Duke of Newcastle, whose fears had surmounted his passion for the first rank in power, had told the King that he would content himself with making bishops in concert with the archbishop. Content or not, he had waived the Treasury, and Lord Rockingham, become First Minister by accepting it, was too fond of power not to engross all he could. It was a proof how old Newcastle was grown, when he bore this pre-eminence without jealousy or treachery.