The anti-Muscovite attitude, suddenly assumed by the Stanhope Cabinet, our author looks to in rather a sceptic mood.
“I do not pretend to foreclose, by this paper, the Ministry of that applause due to them from the public, when they shall satisfy us as to what the motives were, which made them, till but yesterday, straiten the Swede in everything, although then our ally as much as now. Or strengthen by all the ways they could, the Czar, although under no tie, but barely that of amity with Great Britain.... At the minute I write this 1 learn that the gentleman, who brought the Muscovites, not yet three years ago, as a royal navy, not under our protection, on their first appearance in the Baltic, is again authorised by the persons now in power, to give the Czar a second meeting in these seas. For what reason, or to what good end?”
The gentleman hinted at is Admiral Norris, whose Baltic campaign against Peter I seems, indeed, to be the original pattern upon which the recent naval campaigns of Admirals Napier and Dundas were cut out.[125]