The Faber Letters (1778)

Oglethorpe’s Faber letters were first ascribed to Oglethorpe by Phinizy Spalding.¹ At least two Faber letters, copies of which the general sent to Boswell, were published in Bingley’s Journal, apparently on April 7 and 14, 1778, and others may have followed.² They embody many of the same charges that Oglethorpe made in his letter to Boswell on March 21, 1778, where he also accused the members of Parliament, the “Westminster Boys,” of rapine and bribery.³

As with “Adams,” the “Faber” signature was probably intended as generic, recalling the Latin faber— “workman” or “artisan.” The subscription “An old Antigallican” points towards France exclusively, although the Bourbons occupied the Spanish throne as well as the French and were united by the Family Compact. The term “antigallican” had been used by various writers since midcentury and by a London club since about 1755; and the Oglethorpe booksale catalog (item 498) shows Letters relating to the Antigallican Privateer (1758). Oglethorpe may have by “old” suggested a longtime conviction, or he may have merely recognized his own age—eighty-one.

Oglethorpe may have sent his letters to a paper with a limited circulation because Bingley had elicited his sympathy. Because the editor had continued John Wilkes’s antiministerial North Briton, he had been imprisoned for two years, without trial, in the King’s Bench Prison, with which Oglethorpe was of course quite familiar. Indeed Bingley had published his newspaper from the prison.

The Faber letters develop the apparently simplistic premise that England’s divisions all stemmed from plots of the Bourbons. Oglethorpe could not indict the French people, although he had fought against them under Frederick the Great.⁴ His closest family ties were in France and that part of Savoy which was soon to become part of France—with his sister Eleanor’s family (Mézières), his sister Louisa Mary’s (Bassompierre), and his sister Francis Charlotte’s (Bellegarde); and it was to a French nephew that he was to will his estate.

Doubtless Oglethorpe overstated his case. George III apparently believed that he could maintain a peaceful coexistence with France; and many members of Parliament clung to the ideal of an entente cordiale. But Oglethorpe’s suspicions of French espionage and English venality were not the fancies of an elderly paranoid. He had grown up in a family devoted to undercover activity on behalf of the Old Pretender, and he doubtless occasionally served as their youthful courier. Under the notorious transvestite the Chevalier d’Eon and the famous dramatist Beaumarchais,⁵ the French secret service had recently become remarkably active and proficient in England.

The charge of bribery is more complex. It was in the interest and purpose of the French to keep out of power their chief adversary, William Pitt, while they prepared for what seemed to them an inevitable conflict. Pitt’s supporters were in a small minority; and of those who opposed him, few were overly scrupulous about accepting Gallic gifts, apparently ignoring the old proverb Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis. The legal definition of bribery at the time was restricted to characterize venal judges; and a form of bribery was apparently a way of life for the administration and Parliament.⁶ Members of Parliament usually obtained their seats through the bribery of voters—in gifts and entertainment—and they expected to be compensated. Those who opposed administrative and parliamentary bribery were few and far between. When Edmund Burke exposed the unscrupulous Warren Hastings for his wholesale peculations in India, few in the House of Lords even bothered to vote, and those who did, acquitted him.

The Cat let out of the Bag.
To the ANTIGALLICANS.
NUMBER I.
(To be continued.)

THE mine, at which the French have long laboured, is sprung.

But I must excuse myself for charging the French nation, who are a gay and agreeable people, with the crimes of their oppressors, the Bourbonites:⁷ it is these who are the instruments of that tyranny, which has for ages oppressed France, and tore Europe to pieces by cruel wars.

The whole attention of the Bourbonites, ever since they bought the peace, has been by artifice to get what they could not obtain by arms.

Delenda Carthago was the maxim of the Romans,⁸ and pursued, in spite of defeats, for ages, till they extirpated the Carthaginian race and language.

Destroy England has been the maxim of the tyrants over the Frenchmen, from the Philips and Charles’s, of Valois, to the Lewis’s, of the Bourbon race. This they have uniformly pursued; and always baffled in arms, by treachery and intrigues, have regained what they lost by open war.

The same influence by which they obtained the last peace of Paris,⁹ they exerted to gain an ascendant in our Councils. They bribed all our under clerks that would submit to be corrupted; they flattered and deceived the great; they spread the enchantment of pleasure, the net by which they caught the youth; and plaid off the passions of the aged statesman against each other. They sent legions of friseurs and dancers amongst the women; and pimps, taylors, and cooks, dispersed themselves into all the rich families; and by this means the Bourbonite ministers maintain spies, and make us pay them.

The first use the Bourbonites made of their influence, was driving out their much-dreaded Mr. Pitt. They hired all the scriblers they could get, to set the people of England against our most useful ministers, and the King’s truest friends. They infatuated the then new Ministry, and made them disoblige the King of Prussia, the House of Brunswick,¹⁰ and all the Protestant German Princes, who zealously assisted us in the war. They made a cat’s foot of Grenville,¹¹ and he cut off and refused to pay the forage, &c. furnished by those princes to our troops in the utmost necessity. They also put the mad idea of a great financier in his head, suggested the stamp act, stirred up the avarice of his heart against the Americans, which leven of avarice remaining in the offices, has brought on our present distress. They turned their arts against all who had been dangerous to them in the war. They by intrigues made a revolution in Russia, and took away the life of Peter the IIId. for having assisted our allies.

The army which had done such wonders in America, was an object they thought it their interest to destroy; their under-hand arts prevailed on Ministry to send them to East Florida, and somber unhealthy climates, where the most part perished.¹²

By the same arts they set the Ministry on tireing out, or opposing every great man, who had or could be useful to us; even the universally admired and beloved Granby, Conway, and Hawke,¹³ the conquerors at Minden and sea, were tired out of employment.

They set on their hireling Grub-street scriblers to defame Clive; they set Burgoyne to spout at him in the House of Commons.¹⁴ The glorious contrast! These got Lord George, of Minden,¹⁵ to be Director of the War in America; and the pompous orator, Burgoyne, to be General of the army from Canada, and now he gives balls at Boston.¹⁶

George, well-known to Prince Ferdinand, of Brunswick; and Burgoyne, that had abused and attacked Clive in Parliament—Clive, who with not 400 English, and a few Indians, had scattered an army of 60,000 men, brought millions of money to the nation, and revenged the tortures of the Black-Hole, on the black tyrant Soubah.¹⁷ Burgoyne has shook the senate; and now a prisoner, he gives balls at Boston.

Brethren

You see by this, that the Bourbonites, whom you so nobly opposed, and have often disappointed in their designs of ruining us, have again brought us to the edge of destruction. By you the nation was roused, and you assisted Mr. Pitt’s efforts. France’s projects were overturned, and Europe, America, and India, were saved from their claws. Let us again rouze the nation, and assist in persuading Chatham to take the pilotage, and steer the realm into a port of safety; and let us strain every nerve to support our country.

I am, Your humble servant,
R. FABER,
An old Antigallican.

FOR BINGLEY’S JOURNAL.
NUMBER II.
To the ANTIGALLICANS.
The Cat let out of the Bag.

Brethren,

THE Bourbonite hirelings are in the highest agitation, and terrified at the glorious spirit of reconciliation, which shews itself on the hopes of Chatham’s advice being followed with perseverance. They dread the rage of united Britons; and to prevent it, they spout all their venom. They disguise themselves under every shape; some as advocates for liberty, some as zealous friends to the King, some as Dissenters; but all drive the main point, which is blowing up divisions, and hindering measures being determined and pursued.

In one of the morning papers* there was an excellent letter, which shewed the writer perfectly acquainted with the secret measures of the Bourbonites, and their dark artifices, and well he may, for he shews himself one. He speaks of the steps taken after the infamous peace, “to this purpose, their mercenary writers and runners, of whom legions were every where employed, gave out, that we were ruined by our successes, disgraced by triumphs, and beggared by the greatness of our acquisitions. They villainously propagated that the war was ruinous, destructive, and bloody.”¹⁸ All this to degrade our victories, and the great Minister who conducted us to them. It is true, the war was destructive, ruinous, and bloody, but it was so to the Bourbonites, whose ambition and eternal usurpations made it necessary.

The above-quoted excellent paper flowed from the direction of the Bourbonites; for with all these bold truths against Ministry, he drives at the main point of our enemies, the dividing us; he throws on the Scots and Tories the measures which the Bourbonites directed; by this he blows up rage between Britons. Nothing shews more the deep arts of the Bourbonites in disguise than this instance, where their hireling wears the mask of a patriot.

With respect to the Scots, they furnish numbers of the most valuable men, and the nation in general valiant and hardy. The landed gentlemen of England, and the country people through the kingdom, and in London too, were mostly Tories whilst the spirit of parties lasted; but the nonsense of parties ended when Mr. Pitt received the direction of the State, under George the Second. The reviving those odious distinctions are the fruits not of Scots or Tories, but of Bourbon influence. The same who were corrupted to make the peace, were obliged to follow the directions of the Bourbonites, in whose hands their lives were, since they could at any time prove the money they had bribed them with. From that time the Bourbon influence has been as strong in England as in France. It is that influence there made the gang here follow such measures as have divided America from us, has urged a distinction between Whig and Tory, between cyder and malt counties, churchman and Presbyterian, England and Scotland, England and Ireland; every man who helps to enflame differences, is doing the business of Bourbon, and must be esteemed a Bourbonite hireling, or a fool who does their scavengers work, without finding the gold.

Another laboured point of the Bourbonites, is to frighten us, and make us believe we have no strength. Their strongest argument is, you did not shew your strength; the reason is, their influence blinded us. This appears strongly in one instance. The militia, by the present mode of raising it, is not poor thirty thousand men. The strength of England was tried and known when Ministers had sense, and knew how to use the strength of the nation.

Chamberlayne’s exact account is an abstract from the records and returns now in the Tower, and shews our ancestors knew how to make use of the strength of England. It is worth while to look seriously at the act for the militia, the 12th of Charles the IId. And at

Angliæ Notitia.
By EDWARD CHAMBERLAYNE.
The Eighth Edition.
Printed in the Savoy, 1674. Part II. p. 160.
“There is the standing militia by land.”

These are commonly called the train-bands of every county, whereof the number is so great, that in only five of the bigger counties of England there are to be found well provided 40,000 able, lusty men, ready to assist the King upon all occasions, so that in all times of peace the King hath 140,000 men enrolled, and wholly and solely at his disposing, for the defence of his kingdom of England.

P. 161. In 1588, upon expectation of the Spanish Armada, stiled Invincible, there went forth from the Queen’s Commissions to muster in all parts of England, all men that were of perfect sense and limb, from the age of sixteen to sixty, except noblemen, clergymen, University students, lawyers, officers, and such as had any public charges, leaving only in every parish so many husbandmen as were sufficient to till the ground.

In all these musters there were then numbered three millions; but of those fit for war, about six hundred thousand.

In another muster of Queen Elizabeth, there were found in all England fit for war, of common soldiers, about 400,000, and of those armed, and trained 185,000, besides horse near 40,000; and that the nobility and gentry were then able to bring into the field, of their servants and followers 20,000 men, horse and foot, choice men, and excellent horses, and in all fit for war, and ready upon all occasions 642,000, leaving sufficient to till the ground and to furnish trades, besides nobility, gentry, &c.¹⁹

The numbers of the men in the realm, I fear, are lessened by the acts of oppression, made by the Bourbonite hirelings at Westminster; but you see there are men enough; there are also ships, arms, and provisions enough, not only to defend Britain and Ireland, but even to penetrate into the heart of France.

The wisdom to create unanimity and obedience, and to use that obedience towards preserving the King, and the liberties and properties of the people, and the constitution in church and state, is only wanting.

The scripture says, “A poor wise man saved the city.”²⁰ We know Lord Chatham is not rich, because he would not plunder. As for his wisdom, let his actions answer, and the opinion of the nation.

His Majesty’s goodness, we may hope, will be prevailed on by the prayers of the nation, to use the wisdom and experience of this Peer, whom Providence has still preserved, able to assist in this perplexing situation.

I am, Brethren,²¹

^*In the Gazetteer, March 30, signed “A Plain Dealer.”