and teacher of Talleyrand. “Frederick II,”he says “having been abandoned by the Cabinet of London, could not but attach himself to Russia.” — See his History of the Revolutions in Europe.] This is the real fact, and to confirm it, a few days since, Count Solms, the Prussian Minister, came to visit me, and told me, that if this Court had any intention of concluding an alliance with ours, without such a clause, he had orders to oppose against it in the strongest manner. Hints have been given me, that if Great Britain were less inflexible in that article, Russia will be less inflexible in the article of export duties in the Treaty of Commerce, which M. Gross told your lordship this Court would never depart from. I was assured at the same time, by a person in the highest degree of confidence with M. Panin, that if we entered upon the Treaty of Alliance the Treaty of Commerce would go on with it passibus aequis [equal steps]; that then the latter would be entirely taken out of the hands of the College of Trade, where so many cavils and altercations had been made, and would be settled only between the Minister and myself, and that he was sure it would be concluded to our satisfaction, provided the Turkish clause was admitted into the Treaty of Alliance. I was told also that in case the Spaniards attacked Portugal we might have 15,000 Russians in our pay to send upon that service. I must intreat your lordship on no account to mention to M. Gross the secret article of the Danish Treaty.... That gentleman, I am afraid, is no well-wisher to England.”