64 CHARLES LEE 



and Germany, as well as from England ; but the 

 enterprise found few supporters. About this time, in 

 1763, the i03d regiment was disbanded, and Lee 

 passed virtually into retirement as a major on half-pay. 

 At this he was disappointed and enraged, for a good 

 word from the Count von Lippe-Schaumburg had 

 given him some reason to expect promotion. But the 

 ministry disliked him, partly on account of his liberal 

 opinions and the vehemence with which he declared 

 them, partly because of the fierceness with which he vili- 

 fied and lampooned anybody of whom he disapproved. 

 Though his later career showed that he had not the 

 courage of his convictions, yet there can be no doubt 

 that he really entertained very decided opinions. He 

 was a radical free-thinker of the unripe, acrid sort, like 

 his contemporaries, John Wilkes and Thomas Paine. 

 He wrote and talked quite sensibly about many 

 things ; his sympathetic appreciation of Beccaria's 

 great treatise on " Crime and Punishment " was much 

 to his credit ; as a schoolboy in Switzerland he had 

 learned republican theories under good teachers ; and 

 there is no reason for doubting his sincerity in hating 

 and despising the despotism which then prevailed 

 almost everywhere on the continent of Europe. 

 Sometimes he dealt humorously with such topics ; as 

 in his epistle to David Hume. In reading books on 

 history, he said, nothing had so frequently shocked 

 him as the disrespectful and irreverent manner in 

 which divers writers have spoken of crowned heads. 

 " Many princes, it must be owned, have acted in some 

 instances not altogether as we could wish," but it is 

 the duty of the historian to draw a veil over their 

 weakness. He was glad to see that Mr. Hume had 



