In the meantime a cloud seemed to threaten the negotiation with Spain. The Prince of Masserano asked Lord Rochford abruptly, when we should cede the Falkland Islands to them again? This seemed to indicate a secret article of future restitution. Lord Rochford said, “No minister would dare for his head, to answer that question.” Monsieur Francés owned that our Ministers had given no positive promise of restoring the island, yet the greatest encouragement to Spain to expect we would restore it. Our Ministers, indeed, had positively declared in Parliament, that there was no secret article in the treaty;[169] yet this question of the Spanish Ambassador, the declaration of Francés, and the dilatory slowness of Spain, had much the air of dissatisfaction. Spain is not like other countries, that raise their revenues at home. Spain’s resources depend on the arrival of their flotas from the West Indies. They had received their galleons, and were prepared for two years. As they forbore to send out another plate-fleet, it looked as if the pacification was still incomplete. Our Ministers, however, triumphing in having avoided a war, set forth an exultation written by Dr. Samuel Johnson, and very abusive on the Opposition, the Bill of Rights, Lord Chatham, Junius, and the Lord Mayor, with most of their names at length,--the very kind of grievance of which the Court complained. With a lumber of learning and some strong parts, Johnson was an odious and mean character. By principle a Jacobite, arrogant, self-sufficient, and overbearing by nature, ungrateful through pride, and of _feminine bigotry_, he had prostituted his pen to party even in a dictionary, and had afterwards, for a pension, contradicted his own definitions. His manners were sordid, supercilious, and brutal, his style ridiculously bombastic and vicious; and, in one word, with all the pedantry he had all the gigantic littleness of a country schoolmaster.
From the East Indies came bad news; a dreadful famine had depopulated Bengal and swept away multitudes. It was imputed in a great measure to the servants of the East India Company, who, amidst every species of tyranny and plunder, had monopolized the chief aliments of the country.[170] A ship with three supervisors, who had been sent thither to correct those horrible abuses, had been lost in its passage.