Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third Volume I Part 25

I cannot too frequently return my thanks to your Lordship for the very kind and friendly intentions you have of affording me every communication in your power, and of allowing me to derive every a.s.sistance I can from your Lordship's great knowledge of the country, its interests, and the view of its parties and leading men. It will be with the greatest pleasure I shall ever receive any instance of your Lordship's regard, and I am sure none can be more agreeable, or of more importance to me, than this will be.

With regard to the articles of domestic accommodation, I shall reserve the discussion of them to Sir Willoughby Acton and Mr.

Fremantle. Sir Willoughby proposes to set out for Dublin on Monday next, and is so obliging as to undertake this trouble for me. He will have the honour of paying his respects to your Excellency, if you will give him leave.

I have the honour to be, my dear Lord, Your most obedient and faithful humble servant, Northington.

LORD NORTH TO LORD TEMPLE.

Whitehall, May 17th, 1783.

My Lord,

Upon the receipt of your Excellency's letters of the 9th and 10th of this month, I took immediately every step in my power that might forward your Excellency's wishes, and have now the satisfaction of informing your Excellency that Lord Northington will not fail to be at Holyhead on the 1st day of next month; and I am commanded by His Majesty to express to your Excellency his wish, that you will not quit the Government of Ireland before the arrival of Lord Northington. Although your Excellency will, according to this arrangement, be detained a few days longer than the 25th of the present month, yet I hope that the time fixed by Lord Northington is not so remote as to cause any public or private inconvenience.

By my letter of the 9th instant, I flatter myself that I have removed the uneasiness which your Excellency has expressed more than once, because His Majesty's approbation of your Excellency's Government has not been notified in a manner the most agreeable to your Excellency. I am sure that when you read that letter, your Excellency was convinced that your former complaint was ill-founded; that His Majesty's gracious approbation of your Excellency's conduct has been substantially conveyed to your Excellency; and that there is nothing in the whole tenor of my letters which can justify your Excellency's opinion, that a total change of system is to be adopted both with regard to the Chief Governor, and the measures of Government in Ireland.

I have the honour to be, with the greatest respect, My Lord, Your Excellency's most obedient humble servant, North.

P.S.--The messenger carries three letters from Lord Northington--one to your Excellency, one to Lieutenant-General Burgoyne, and another to General Baugh.

His Excellency the Earl Temple, &c., &c., &c.

LORD NORTHINGTON TO LORD TEMPLE.

St. James's Place, May 25th, 1783.

My dear Lord,

Your Excellency has not been able to remove those unpleasant and mortifying ideas I entertain at the thoughts of being obliged to pay either no attention to a day, to which all honour and respect is due, or to do it in a manner unbecoming, and not suitable to the occasion. Indeed, my information by numerous Irish gentlemen now here, tells me that, although it may not be expected that I should give (what your Lordship says) _a dinner_ on the occasion, it will be expected I shall hold a Court, and that I shall give a ball. Then I understand likewise, from your letters, as you declare your positive and fixed resolution not to hold a _Court_ on that day in the despatch, the last but one which I had the honour to receive, and that from strong reasons of delicacy, both public and private, which, as your Excellency does not explain, at this distance and in my state of ignorance at present I am at a loss to conceive.

I have the honour to be, my dear Lord, Your faithful and obedient humble servant, Northington.

Lord Temple's administration was too brief to enable him to develop the plans he had laid down for the benefit of Ireland; but the most conclusive testimony that can be adduced in favour of his policy is the a.s.surance he received from Lord North, that no intention of deviating from it was entertained by the new Ministers. Although, however, Lord Northington did not openly deviate from the main points of his policy, he followed it up with a luke-warmness and insincerity that rendered it to a great extent inoperative. His Lordship appears to have betrayed, not only in his measures, but in the spirit and tone in which they were brought forward, an unworthy desire to discredit the influence and reputation of his predecessor, who pursued a line of conduct after he left Ireland which--putting aside all obligations to the public--ent.i.tled him at least to protection against such sinister attempts to undermine the confidence his zealous services had acquired.

Having resigned the Government into the hands of Lord Northington, to whom he frankly offered all the a.s.sistance and information his experience enabled him to bestow, he strictly avoided all interference in Irish affairs that might be likely--even remotely--to embarra.s.s his successor. Numerous applications were made to him on a variety of subjects; individuals and parties sought his advice and interposition; but he made the same answer to all--referring them at once to the established authority, and declining to use any influence, upon the most trifling occasions, which in his position he might have legitimately exercised. His magnanimity was thrown away upon a thankless soil. The situation he had filled with so much honour and advantage, was now occupied by a n.o.bleman who could neither appreciate nor imitate his lofty example.

The princ.i.p.al objects to which Lord Temple had directed his attention were the Bill of Renunciation, and a wise economy in the public expenditure. The former he carried; the latter it was impossible to consolidate in the short term of six months. In his indefatigable labours for the good of Ireland he never stooped to conciliate faction at the cost of duty, or the sacrifice of principle. He administered his high office to promote the interests, and not to pander to the pa.s.sions of the people. The Bill of Renunciation was said to have been a scheme of Mr. Flood's; but by taking charge of it himself, Lord Temple deprived it of the mischievous _prestige_ it might have acquired under such dangerous auspices. The Bill, however, was not Mr. Flood's. Whatever merit, or demerit attaches to it, belongs exclusively to Lord Temple.

Lord Northington, overlooking the fact that this Bill was simply a confirmation of the settlement of 1782, and that it really granted nothing new, endeavoured to make it a fulcrum for working further changes and more extensive concessions--not, it may be presumed, without an indirect view to the improvement of his own popularity. The mode in which he thus proposed to carry out Lord Temple's policy provoked the Government, at last, to remonstrate with him. Even Mr. Fox, who could not be suspected of any disinclination to give a patient hearing to Irish demands, seeing the part he had already taken on such questions, felt it necessary to check his exuberant zeal on behalf of the particular party, whose views and opinions he had so injudiciously adopted. On the 8th of November, he wrote to Lord Northington an admonishing letter upon a variety of points connected with Irish affairs, towards the conclusion of which he observed:

I hope, my dear Northington, you will not consider this long letter as meant to blame your conduct; but I think I owe it as much to my friendship for you as to the public, to give you fairly my opinion and advice in your most arduous situation; and I will fairly own there is one principle which seems to run through your different _despatches_, which a little alarms me: it is this--you seem to think as if it were absolutely necessary at the outset of your Government, to do something that may appear to be obtaining _boons_, however trifling, to Ireland; and what I confess I like still less, is to see that this is, in some degree, grounded upon the ampleness of former concessions.

Now I see this in quite a different light, and reason that, because these concessions were so ample, no further ones are necessary. If, because the Duke of Portland gave much, are you to give something? Consider how this reasoning will apply to your successor. I repeat it again, the account must be considered as closed in 1782.[1]

[Footnote 1: Extracted from a letter published in the Life of Mr.

Grattan.]

It may be observed, _en parenthese_, that the a.s.sertion that the Duke of Portland gave much, is a gratuitous a.s.sumption. When his Grace came into office, he found the Renunciation Bill pa.s.sing through its last stages, and he suffered it to pa.s.s; but, as Mr. Fox states in this very letter, with the utmost reluctance. The Duke of Portland, in fact, gave nothing.

He submitted to the measure of his predecessors because he could not avoid it, and he would have retreated from it if he could.

No useful result would be gained by a comparison between the intelligible principles and consistency evinced by Lord Temple in his government of Ireland, and the small views and tremulous policy of his successor; but it is something to the purpose of history to note that, while Lord Northington affected to adopt the economical system of Lord Temple, he secretly desired to stultify it, and that so far from being actuated by any sentiment of respect for the government of his predecessor, he suffered the motions of thanks which both Houses of Parliament voted to Lord Temple, when they met in the following October, to pa.s.s without a solitary expression of approval on the part of any member of the Administration. These facts are somewhat indignantly stated in a letter addressed to Lord Temple, by Lord Mornington, on the 18th of October, 1783. Respecting the vote of thanks, his Lordship observes:

Government had not the spirit to take a part against the motions of thanks in either House, _but I have every reason to think that they would have done it, if there had been the smallest prospect of success in the attempt_. You must observe that the vote of the House of Commons is much weaker than that of the Lords; Gardiner was obliged, by the interference of Government's friends, to omit several expressions which, if they had been retained, would have rendered the vote more just to your Lordship's Administration, but would have occasioned debate. The fact is, that no compliment to the Act of Renunciation, or even to the framer of it, can be borne with patience by certain supporters of the present Castle.

And in the report of his own speech on this occasion, which accompanies the letter, Lord Mornington plainly charges the Government with duplicity in reference to Lord Temple's system of economy. Referring to a pa.s.sage in the Lord-Lieutenant's speech, where his Excellency, in recommending the establishment of the Genevans, reminded Parliament of their duty to "avoid _unnecessary expense_," his Lordship expresses a hope that in "other cases, where all profusion would be dangerous, and where the public safety demanded the most rigid economy, _in the establishments of Government, his Excellency would think it_ HIS _duty to avoid all unnecessary expense_;" and then, comparing the recommendation respecting the Genevans with another pa.s.sage where his Excellency applied for a supply, and in which "his Excellency's economy made no appearance," Lord Mornington goes on to say:

Comparing the two pa.s.sages of the speech, he [Lord Mornington]

was apt to imagine that the expression, "unnecessary expense,"

was dictated by another spirit, and with other views, than of saving to the public: he suspected that it was meant to insinuate by so special, and seemingly superfluous a recommendation of economy in the further progress of the establishment of the Genevans, that there had been some neglect of economy in the original foundation of the scheme; if that was meant, he called upon the confidential servants of the Castle to avow it; if not, he insisted that they should do justice to the personage who had originally framed this plan, and disclaim his construction of this ambiguous phrase. _He knew what had been the language of the Castle on this subject; he knew how this scheme had been decried; and what a damp had been cast upon the proposers of it_--such a damp, as he had reason to believe, that the settlement had not advanced one step since the departure of Lord Temple; and he would add, in justice both to the late and present Ministry, that he, in his conscience, believed, if the public were put to any _unnecessary expense_ by the settlement, _it must be attributed solely and entirely to the delays and impediments which had been thrown in its way by the present Castle_.

On a subsequent day, moving the thanks of the House to Lord Temple, Lord Mornington delivered an eloquent panegyric upon his Government. He spoke of the Act of Renunciation as having produced an "instantaneous calm in Ireland," and, adverting to other matters, observed:

These were the great public acts of Lord Temple's Government, the nation at large had felt their effects, the Lord-Lieutenant had from the throne applauded them; the House itself had applauded them in detail, and therefore would not object to doing so in the gross, which he now called upon the House to do.

With regard to the general attention of Lord Temple to the common duties of his office, and his management of the interior system of government here, he would deliver no opinion of his own; he would appeal to those whose high stations and confidential offices gave them constant access to the person and councils of Lord Temple, to testify his ability and a.s.siduity in business, the extent of his researches, the vigilance with which he penetrated into the secrets of departments where the most gross rapine and peculation had been practised for ages with impunity, _and particularly the firm integrity with which he resisted all jobs, however speciously concealed, or powerfully recommended_.

Nothing need be added to this unimpeachable eulogium on the character of Lord Temple's administration of the Government of Ireland. It comes from an authority above suspicion, and its statements will guide the decisions of history.

In the midst of these political anxieties there was a private grief, arising out of the sundering of attachments consequent upon the unnatural state of parties, that preyed severely on the sensitive mind of Lord Temple. This painful matter forms the subject of a letter from Lord Temple to his brother, Mr. Thomas Grenville, which has not been inserted in its chronological place, as it would have interrupted the sequence of the preceding correspondence. The tender and affectionate feelings. .h.i.therto subsisting unimpaired between the brothers, who, in addition to the rest of their n.o.ble qualities, were distinguished beyond most men by their domestic virtues, had been interrupted by one of those fatal divisions in public life, which, during this memorable crisis, separated the closest friends.

The particular occasion which now for the first time produced disunion between Lord Temple and his brother, is not expressly stated in the letter; but it may be surmised from the correspondence which took place early in the preceding year between Mr. Thomas Grenville and Mr. Fox, when the former was employed upon the American negotiation in Paris. Mr.

Thomas Grenville, devoting himself to the interests of Mr. Fox, still preserved his allegiance to him under the arrangements of the Coalition Administration; and, from certain expressions in this letter, it would appear that he had ventured to make some overture to Lord Temple, with a view to induce him to reconsider the line of action he had resolved upon, if indeed it did not amount to the distinct proposal of an office under the new Ministry. The exact nature of that offer is veiled under the language of a poignant and bitter regret, which seeks to avoid details the writer was most unwilling to enter into; but it is sufficiently explicit as to the "new connection" Mr. Thomas Grenville had formed, in an opposite direction to that which Lord Temple's devotion to the principles they held in common had led him to embrace.

The sensibility manifested by Lord Temple in reference to this unhappy affair, shows that his heart was as impressionable as his judgment was clear and firm.

LORD TEMPLE TO MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE.

Ph[oe]nix Lodge, May 9th, 1783.

Dear Brother,

Your letter, which mentions one written some time since, came yesterday to my hands; and upon the same day came a monthly account from Coutts, by which I see that, by Welles's neglect, and by the delay of my stewards, I had unknowingly drawn for the expenses of my departure beyond my state; but as it is proper that your wants should be supplied, I have writ to Frogatt, to order him to let you have some 500 from some money of mine in his hands; and I will let you have more as soon as I can.

The remainder of your letter gives me, indeed, the most sensible concern, for it shows me that line broken, which I was still in hopes was only strained; for this is the only interpretation which I can put upon that offer, which (from the most honourable motives) you have made to me; and the only wish which I can now form, is that you may never reflect for whom, and for what, you have sacrificed that political and intimate connexion, which nature had pointed out, and which till this moment I had not despaired of. One opportunity presented itself in which you could have done me essential service: I never can regret the eagerness with which I entreated from you that proof of affection, because I still feel how much I would have sacrificed, to have preserved our bond inviolate; that, with many other prospects, is now gone, and I am to feel that I have lost that confidence, that good-will and attachment which you have given to a friendship, which, for obvious reasons, I must ever regret. I do not speak this in resentment and reproach, my feelings are far above them, but in sober and earnest grief of mind. I must remind you that no personal friendship, no party or political consideration, could have guided the steps which I took in June last; to which, in terms the most decisive, you marked your line of separation. The same public principles (for with no one person in England have I correspondence) have decided me in the present moment, and in neither path have we met; and parting upon such a question as that of the present system (upon which I feel everything as a public man, and as a private man have the sensations which naturally result from personal insult), I fear that we have (at least for some time) little chance of seeing those affections vibrate in unison which I feel so strongly strained. Once more let me entreat you (for I am not ashamed to entreat) to reconsider this well. If your new connexion replaces to you that affectionate interest which from my childhood I have borne to you; if your line holds out to you that honourable satisfaction, which I trust you would not have lost by a cordial union of objects and dispositions with me, I fear that I speak in vain; but if you give that play to your reason, to your affection, and to every feeling which Providence has given, as the cement of the tenderest and most intimate connexions, remember that in offering to you my heart, I mean to offer to you everything which the truest love can give you, but what must and can depend only on the closest union. Weigh this well, and may every good angel guide your decision. Adieu.

Lord Temple must have been the more distressed by the course his brother had taken on this occasion, from the evidences he received of the sanction of other friends, who were governed in their own conduct by his example. These proofs of attachment and approval, while they afforded the most gratifying testimony to the rect.i.tude of his views, touched him deeply in contrast with the alienation of his brother.

Only a few days before he wrote this letter to Mr. Thomas Grenville, we find Lord Bulkeley addressing him in the following terms, alluding to the communication in which Lord Temple had informed him of his determination to resign. "I had great pleasure," observes the writer, "in receiving your last very kind letter, and in learning from yourself the line you meant to take at a critical conjuncture like the present, when the candidates for honour and principle are so reduced in number, that those who forego great situations to bring them forward again, have every t.i.tle to confidence and support, and deserve every honest and independent encouragement. You may naturally suppose I have not been without solicitations from the Coalition Government; I have given but one answer, which was that I shall certainly act with you, and more especially as your conduct in resigning gave me, if possible, a greater opinion of and veneration for your character than I could by any means express."

Such testimonies were consolatory in the difficult position in which Lord Temple was placed; but, instead of alleviating the pain he felt at his separation from his brother in public life, they embittered it by the conviction that one whom he loved so sincerely should have adopted a line of action which he in his conscience believed to be erroneous.