My dear Lord,

Have you heard that we have got two papers, perfectly
attached to us, and considered as the authentic vehicles of
such matters as Government chooses to make known ? Their
titles are the Sun and the True Briton ; and I really think
they are very much superior to any we have seen. It was
indeed high time to look a little seriously upon our daily
vehicles of intelligence ; for almost all of them were in the
pay of the Jacobins, and contained the most atrocious libels



1793J GOVERNMENT NEWSPAPERS. * 229

upon Government, the King, and all those who were not
known to be attached to the French interest. A very good
man at this moment volimteered as a Mend to Government ;
and in return Government has taken him by the hand, and
his papers flourish accordingly. This is a trifling anecdote ;
but, at a moment when all sorts of tricks are playing, I thought
you might like to know where good intelligence was to be
procured.
( 230 ) [Chap. XIV,



CHAPTEE XIV.
Letter from Mmc. Du Barry — ^Letter from Mr, Thornton — ^Re-election of
Washington — ^Mr. Jefferson's Heroes — Letter to Governor Simcoe—
Suicide of the Neapolitan Ambassador — ^Three Letters fix)m Sir W.
Hamilton — "Bakhshish" — The King's Approval of Mr. Burges —
Letter from Sir George Staunton— China and the Chinese.
The following undated letter possesses a melancholy interest,
as being perhaps the last ever written by the notorious
Mme. Du Barry, mistress of Louis XV. Unfortunately for
herself, she obtained her passport, and returned to France,
with the intention of disinterring some diamonds and jewels,
buried under a tree in her park at Luciennes, near Versailles.
