Whitehall, Dec. 25th, 1788.
MY DEAR BROTHER,
I am extremely anxious that you should lose no time in transmitting
over to England an exact statement of the case respecting your
commission, and of the points and arguments on which your lawyers
ground their opinions, in order that they may be well considered
here by those who are interested in your situation and character,
as deeply and as warmly as Pitt and myself. You mention in your
last, that it has occurred to you, that it would be right _if you
are_ intemperately removed to desire the opinion of our judges on
the point. But you do not seem to consider that, whenever that case
occurs, you may have to decide _on the moment_, either to quit your
Government, and to swear in the new Lord-Lieutenant, or to hold it
against him, in contradiction to the orders of English Government.
Suppose he should himself be the messenger of his own appointment,
as was the case with the Duke of Portland. The same reason exactly
exists for it now as before, namely, the fear of suffering the
dismissed Lord-Lieutenant to meet the Parliament, especially in a
moment when their conduct is so important. The best and, indeed,
almost only security that you could have in such a case for the
justification of your own conduct, whatever it might be, would be
the having given a full previous intimation to the English
Government of the difficulties and dangers of the case.
You say that I should feel myself at liberty to act for you on the
pressure of any unforeseen case. I certainly should; and my
confidence in your affection, and in your persuasion of my desire
to do the best for you, would encourage me to take, if it were
absolutely necessary, steps even of considerable delicacy and
difficulty. But I cannot but be infinitely anxious, as far as
possible, to be previously in possession of your ideas on every
case that can be foreseen. Besides this, I am at present unable to
do the precise thing which I think would be the most desirable,
because I am not myself in possession of the particular forms of
your commission's passing in England and in Ireland, so as to be
able to state them to others. And yet this is the point on which,
in one view of the case, the whole question turns. I confess that,
in my own individual opinion, there is another point distinct from
that of forms, on which I should be disposed to maintain the
incompetence of any English revocation of your commission. It is
this:
_We_ (that is Pitt and his friends) hold and have persuaded
Parliament to declare that, in such a case as the present, the
right of providing for the emergency rests in the two Houses, not
as branches of the Legislature, but as a full and free
representative of all the orders and classes of the people of Great
Britain. Now the moment that we admit this, we do it on the ground
of this being a case unprovided for. If it is so in England, it is
unquestionably equally unprovided for in Ireland; and the right of
making such provision must of necessity rest in the same manner in
the Lords and Commons of England. There is this difference, that
here the Parliament could not be legally opened, unless the Lord
Chancellor had taken upon himself to put the Great Seal to a
commission for that purpose, whereas your commission enables you
(as I understand) generally to open and hold Parliament. But even
in your case, it seems to me to be a doubt whether you can
regularly do this without having received the King's pleasure for
it, and whether your opening the Parliament in such circumstances
is not an act very much of the same nature as the Chancellor's
would have been if he had sealed such a commission.
In the same view of the subject, I should most earnestly deprecate
your taking upon yourself to issue a further prorogation. Surely,
under such circumstances as the present, the two Houses should
themselves decide, and not any individual for them, whether it is
expedient or not to proceed to any business. My clear and decided
opinion on that subject is, that you should go down on the day of
meeting, and state the circumstances of the case, saying that you
have ordered the several examinations of the physicians before
Council and before the two Houses here, to be laid before the two
Houses. Your Ministers should then, upon that, propose to adjourn
to a further day, on the ground of its not being known (as it
cannot then be known) what form will be adopted here, and of its
being, at all events, desirable that they should be in possession
of that fact before they deliberate, especially as the Government
may go on in the interval without inconvenience.
If you see no objection to this, it is, I think, high time that you
should write an official letter, stating all the circumstances of
the situation, and that your intention is, unless you should be
informed that it appears to His Majesty's servants to be improper,
&c., to meet the Parliament on the 20th, for the purpose which I
have stated.
It is excessively important that you should, at the same time,
transmit, either publicly or privately, such a case as I have
mentioned, considering the subject in the two points of view:
first, with respect to the particular forms; and secondly, to the
question, how far any difference in point of form can preclude the
Parliament of Ireland from the exercise of the same substantive
right as that which we have declared to vest in us under the
existing circumstances.
I have great doubts of the propriety of what you mention of an
address of the two Houses to empower you to give the royal assent
to any Bills, because that would prematurely, as it seems to me,
bring into discussion the great question of all--namely, how far
the Lords and Commons of Ireland have the right, either of
commanding the use of the _English Great Seal_, or of superseding
its use, in an instance in which _that_, and the concurrence of the
_English Council_, are fundamental points of the present
constitution of Ireland. I am quite sure that the safest of all
things will be the adjournment; and I think it very improbable that
such a proposal can be opposed, as it must extremely fall in with
the wishes of the party who are looking to the Government
immediately after the passing the English Bill. I have no means of
knowing or guessing at General Pitt's intentions, but should think
they can be no other than _royal_.
You could surely find no difficulty in pledging the servants of
Government in Ireland to the adjournment; because it can so clearly
be argued not to preclude any future opinion on the subject, and
still less to pledge anybody to the adoption of the English system;
but only shows the opinion of the Irish Parliament, that a
knowledge of the system adopted here, is a point which they wish
should enter into their deliberations respecting Ireland.
I am much amused with the circumstance of Lord Sh. and Lord T.
having sent their proxies, as it has answered no other purpose but
that of pledging them; for it now seems to be agreed, that no use
can be made of proxies in a case where the Parliament does not
legally meet, but is rather to be considered as an extraordinary
assembly of the same persons who constitute the two Houses of
Parliament. It is something more than a Convention, and something
less than a Parliament.
Our triumph here is very great. The indignation of the two Princes
is, by what I hear, beyond all measure or bounds. The steadiness of
the House of Commons on this occasion is no bad lesson to them, and
I believe they will long remember it.
Ever yours,
W. W. G.
In the House of Peers, Ministers did not come off so triumphantly. Lord
Bulkeley communicates the result, and enumerates the _rats_.