Part 14

The difficulty, he told me, lay in bringing them to think of anything but the peace, by which you see that business is still en train.

This consideration makes me less eager than I should otherwise be to cut the matter short. I continue to think, that if they are sufficiently pressed, you will carry your point; because I am fully persuaded they will not push you to the wall. In the meantime they feel the situation into which the notice for the House of Commons has thrown them; for Townshend expressed his satisfaction at it to-day, and said it lay a necessity on Government to do something.

While I am writing this, I receive your letters of the 21st. The despatch will, I think, have a good effect in pressing the thing forward, and assisting the exertions which I sincerely believe Townshend will make. At the same time, as it must now be the 27th at soonest before you can receive this letter, which leaves everything exactly where my last despatches to you did, I should think upon the receipt of it you would do well to write a letter to Townshend, rather demanding than requesting an immediate answer.

What I mean is (if you should approve of the idea), that you should say, "that after having so repeatedly stated the grounds of your proposal, to which you can now add nothing," (because any reasoning of yours brings on more discussion) "except that every day gives fresh force to them, you have nothing left but to request, as your situation entitles you to do, that you may at last have an immediate and explicit answer, in order that on the one hand you may not disgrace your personal honour and the faith of Great Britain by continuing to pledge them to assurances which are not to be performed, nor on the other hand appear by remaining in your situation without a favourable answer, to countenance a system which your own mind informs you to be at once unjust and impracticable." If you think the expressions too strong, or not sufficiently so, you will weaken or aggravate them; but I am very impatient to receive some such letter, which shall not enter into reasons or discussion on a subject so completely exhausted, but shall manifest your own intention, which I am convinced will operate more strongly than all the argument in the world.

You will perhaps say that I have already in my possession such a paper. But I must own I feel great difficulty in fixing the exact moment when to make use of it, and when to say that I can no longer in justice to you give credit to assurances of an immediate determination so often repeated and so often found fallacious. With you, who have received none such, there is no such difficulty. Besides, the letter in my hands can only operate as an actual resignation on your behalf, and authorized by you; whereas the letter from you, which I propose, would operate as a threat, and by that means prevent, I believe, the event itself; or if not, it would at least convince your feelings, as well as mine, most unequivocally of the absolute necessity for taking such a measure, as the only one by which you could preserve either integrity of character or uprightness of conduct. Such a letter might, if the winds do not prevent it, be here in a week from this day; and before that time I am most thoroughly convinced I shall receive not a single word further than I have already. With such a letter to deliver to Townshend, I should think myself authorized to demand a Cabinet; or if I could not obtain that, to make use of your former letter, and desire from you that I might see the King, to state to him your sense of the impracticability of such a system, and of the certainty that Government will be compelled in October to make concessions without gaining any advantage by them, infinitely greater than what would in January conciliate the affections of all Ireland.

One way or other, this business does most certainly draw to a conclusion. I allow, by this proposal, one week more for them to take their resolution. If they delay it beyond that, it is in effect the most mortifying and the most insulting way of refusing it that they could have adopted; and as such I think you would do right to state it in your letter. But whichever way it terminates, I think we shall derive the greatest advantage from Townshend's having authorized me to promise that on the 21st something should be done in the English House of Commons, and having sat by and acquiesced in my saying that that something would, I apprehended, be brought forward by Government. If it is not, I think I need not say what a situation they stand in; and what ours will be--how much better than if nothing had been said. On the other hand, if they do authorize me to bring forward, or bring forward themselves, on that day, a satisfactory Bill, we shall derive much more advantage to Government from having given an early notice of it, and much more personal credit from its coming through my mouth from you, than if it had been done only by the Minister, and kept back till the 21st.

I have had no communication with Lord Shelburne, nor have I either seen or heard from him since I spoke in the House of Commons. I mean, however, to-morrow to write to him on the strength of having received fresh despatches from you, and to press him in the strongest manner, that the Bill to be proposed on the 21st, may be such as will satisfy your wishes by satisfying the people of Ireland. What the new reason for delay will be, God knows. In the meantime is it not inconceivable that a man will hazard so much, in every sense of the word, so much credit as a Minister, so much in point of character, and so much in point of weight and support to his administration, without its being possible for one to discover any one object under Heaven which he is to gain by the delay? Possibly such a letter as I wish from you may succeed in bringing him to his senses; if not, I am sure the sooner your hands are washed of it the better; for if the rest of your administration in Ireland is to go on in the same manner, and you are to be left for months together without knowing whether Government here will expressly support or expressly contradict you, and all this only that they may gain time, without having anything further to gain, such a situation is neither suited for such tempers as we have, nor for such characters as I hope we shall ever preserve together.

The real grievance seems to be, what did hang as a dead weight upon the last administration till it pulled it down, and what must hang as the same dead weight upon this--I mean a Cabinet of eleven. If these are disunited, there are not wanting, even among themselves, men to publish it to the world; and how is it possible that they should be otherwise, except by the means of that delightful expedient which I stated to you once before, and which was again alluded to in yesterday's conversation. I should hope, however, that the appearance of your resolution will put an end to this scene of procrastination, disgraceful to you and dangerous to the country; if it does not, I am sure the resolution itself is most absolutely necessary to vindicate us to ourselves, as well as to others, from the consequences which we both foresee.

In the meantime, my dear brother, I cannot close this letter without expressing to you the extreme pleasure and satisfaction which I feel when, after having confided so much to my discretion, you express yourself satisfied that, however unsuccessful I may have been, the failure of my endeavours to procure this long-expected answer has not been owing to any want of zeal or judgment in me, but to those to whom the consequences are really to be imputed, and who have on that account already made themselves most deeply responsible both to God and their country.

Believe me, my dear brother, Ever most sincerely and affectionately yours, W. W. G.

D'Ivernois is here, and going over almost immediately to Ireland with two other commissaires.

If any decision should drop from the skies before I receive your letter to Townshend, I will suppress it entirely.

MR. W. W. GRENVILLE TO LORD TEMPLE.

Pall Mall, Dec. 25th, 1782.

My dear Brother,

All the effect which I hoped for by the official despatch has been produced by the confidential communication. Townshend has had this morning a long conversation with Lord Shelburne, the result of which is a compliance with your wishes. But this will be done by an official despatch, and not by a Cabinet minute, as they cannot venture to meet a Cabinet upon it. Still, however, I think that is sufficient for you--sufficient to authorize you in present, and to justify you in future. I write this in great haste, in order if possible to prevent the measure which I recommended in my last.

Thurlow will probably oppose it in that House. They talk of altering the bill, but not materially. I put the question explicitly, whether it was to contain a recognition, and was answered that it should. Townshend asked me whether you would be likely to pledge yourself that this should satisfy, as he thought that might possibly be expected. I said it could not be expected that you should pledge yourself for madmen, but that you certainly hoped. He then said that it would take a day or two to prepare and send in circulation the despatch, and hoped this would make no material difference. I said certainly not, if I was allowed to state this conversation to you. To this he agreed. Then I mentioned the dissolution. He said that you seemed to agree that this would take effect much better with the news of a peace, and that (he might tell me confidentially) this must be decided within three days, unless something very unforeseen happens.

On this idea I wait here a few days longer, and then shall bring your despatches with me, and go back if you think it right.

I think the event shows how much more strongly your determination operated, as I said it would, than all the reasoning possible.

Believe me ever, My dear brother, Most sincerely and affectionately yours, W. W. G.

The "Order" referred to in the following letter is the Order of the Knights of St. Patrick, instituted in Ireland, under the Viceroyalty of Lord Temple, on the 5th of February, 1783.

MR. W. W. GRENVILLE TO LORD TEMPLE.

Pall Mall, Dec. 28th, 1782.

My dear Brother,

As, in consequence of your letter of the 25th, I mean to stay over the 21st of January, I write immediately to explain to you what I referred to in my last about the Order. It is not of any very great importance; but as I then expected to have seen you in a few days, I thought I should be able to explain it better by word of mouth.

It relates to the difficulty of reconciling the business of the Commoners who have been talked of for it, with the King's strong approbation of your only having proposed sixteen, and his very great disinclination, which Townshend has repeatedly expressed to me, to increase the number even to eighteen or twenty. I suppose you mean sixteen exclusive of the Sovereign and Grand Master. I apprehend Conolly, Ponsonby, O'Neill, and Daly to have been talked of. The difficulty is greater, because I understand that the two first have more than once refused peerages. This, however, you will arrange as you think best. The King was pleased with the motto, Quis separabit? To this would apply very well the Collar which Hawkins told me had been thought of, of trefoils and roses alternate. Townshend will write, or has wrote, to you for a plan, which plan is meant to include Badges, and all other playthings belonging to it. You'll break Percy's heart if you settle it all without him. Pray oblige me, as a herald, so far as to appoint a genealogist, and to make the Knights deliver in pedigrees three descents back at least: that is the number in the Garter Statutes, which I send to you. The Thistle and Bath have both genealogists--the last must be an arduous office. I do not apprehend that the names are meant to be sent as part of the plan, nor indeed can you do that yet. Do you offer one to the Nolo Privy Councillari, or do you draw the line of none but Privy Councillors?

I called the other day on the Archbishop of Cashel, and was told that he was gone for Ireland; but I'll know in a day or two. Adieu.

Ever yours, W. W. G.