I3Q VISIT TO DENMARK [i799- 



"We were told at Elsinore that people were of late 

 grown much less violent on politics, merely from 

 being tired of talking so much on the subject. 



Lord Eobert Fitzgerald is apparently on conge; 

 but his house and effects being sold, and Mr Merry 

 being settled here as Consul - General and Charge 

 d' Affaires, he is now known to have retired for good 

 till elsewhere provided for. He had been three years 

 here, and his departure was supposed to be owing to 

 a publication in the English papers relative to the 

 Danish East India Company. It is evident that he 

 was not used in the best manner possible at Copen- 

 hagen. Mr Merry calls the literary men here " a 

 set of the greatest Jacobins on the face of the earth." 



Upon the whole, it appears that the mercantile 

 government of Denmark is afraid of joining the 

 coalition on two accounts : first, because its com- 

 merce is sure of suffering in the first instance ; and, 

 secondly, because the consequence must be an imme- 

 diate increase of expense, which in its present situa- 

 tion it could not meet. What service it could render 

 the common cause, even though it could be induced 

 to take a side, I cannot conceive. It must be sub- 

 sidised by England for very indifferent troops, and 

 for any assistance, which, in the present state of men's 

 minds in Denmark, could not be hearty. At the 

 same time the country seems quite in the hands of 

 Eussia and of England, so that the strictest neutrality 



is necessary.* 



* See Appendix XIV. 



