fund which human ingenuity could devise, as well as solemn engagements that in case of a future war the supplies should be raised within the year. If this could be once accomplished, it was obvious that the rich paid whatever was payable, and must gain whatever was gainable; that by relieving commerce and manufactures they must gain by the simplification of the receipt; and by furnishing the means of extending commerce and manufactures, great additional wealth must accrue to the kingdom, all which must finally centre with them. The whole of this reasoning seemed to make a considerable impression upon him. He said that he was to blame for whatever was not done, as he had, so far as regarded these points, the entire confidence of those with whom he acted. I told him I wished honour and glory to whoever was disposed to earn it in the present situation, that I saw no other foundation to build upon, but what I stated—that anarchy was much to be apprehended. He said that nothing more than common firmness was wanting to resist, but acknowledged it had not appeared during the reign. He agreed to raise the licences of public-houses, upon my representing the mischief which resulted from them in the West of England, and the impossibility of getting the country gentlemen to suppress them." And then the conversation wandered off to the strange hallucinations of the Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, under whom Lord Shelburne as a young man had served in the Seven Years' War, who now, General Fawcett said, was entirely taken up with Free Masonry, and "pushed it to such a degree as to occupy his mind with a belief in apparitions and all manner of idle things of the kind"; beliefs which were gaining ground among the German Princes, particularly at Brunswick and Berlin.[1] And there the talk ended. The topic of the occupations of retired generals may possibly have suggested a danger that the
- ↑ The allusion is to the influence of the Illuminati and the Rosicrucian Society. These mystics, with Wöllner their high priest, pretended to be able to evoke the dead, and to have had conversation with the shades of Moses and Cæsar, and even with Christ himself. Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick fell under their influence, so did the King of Prussia. See Charles, Duke of Brunswick, by the present author, pp. 40-41.
