Whitehall, June 1st, 1789.
MY DEAR BROTHER,
I have this morning received your two letters, of the 26th and 28th
together, which was a great relief to me from the uneasiness which
I should have felt from your first letter, if I had received it
separately. I most sincerely hope that you will feel no further bad
effects from this accident. Lady B. has been some days on her road
to Dublin, and is probably with you before this time. I cannot
express to you how much I am concerned that any parts of my letter
on the subject of the promotions should have appeared to you in the
smallest degree wanting in that kindness and warmth of affection
which I so sincerely feel, and always wish and mean to express. I
have no copy of that letter, nor have I any recollection of the
particular turn or expression of it which can at all serve me to
remember what part of it can have impressed your mind with this
sensation. I can therefore only say that, whatever it was, it has
been most remote from my intention, and that as to any expression
which can bear such an interpretation--_totum hoc indictum volo_.
With respect to the King's health, on which you ask me so
particularly, I can only repeat to you what I said in my last
letter--which I have from what I believe to be the very best
authority--that he continues perfectly well, both in mind and body,
and, with respect to the latter, is growing stronger every day. I
beg you to believe, that though I should write you any contrary
account with much pain and mortification, yet that I feel too much
the importance of your being well and accurately informed on the
subject, to have a moment's hesitation in stating anything of that
sort to you as soon as I heard it myself. But, in truth, I believe
that all these reports originate in nothing else than the anxiety
of the King's friends for the preservation of his health, and the
impatience which his enemies feel for the only event which can give
them any prospect of seeing their wishes accomplished.
Addington is the person intended for my successor. He wants only a
little more age, and being a little more known, to make his
nomination unexceptionable; but I certainly cannot but confess that
he does want both these. It is, however, the best appointment that
we can make to a situation to which so few people are willing to
look, and for which so much fewer are at all qualified. I have no
doubt of his acquitting himself well in it, and of his becoming, in
a little time, extremely popular in the House. We shall certainly
lose our Abolition question. The cry against us upon it is growing
every day stronger, without anybody being willing to give
themselves the trouble of entering, in the smallest degree, into
the examination of the grounds upon which our arguments rest.
We have no foreign news, except the continuance of the disputes and
difficulties in France. But these you have as fully in the
newspapers as I could detail them to you. The accounts from Vienna
seem to agree that there is not much probability of the Emperor's
finally recovering these repeated attacks, though he may linger out
a considerable time.
Adieu, my dear brother,
And believe me ever most sincerely and affectionately yours,
W. W. G.
Lord Buckingham's health had suffered so much from the toils and
anxieties to which he had been exposed during the last few months, that
his physicians urged upon him the necessity of trying the waters at
Bath. So long as the exigencies of the public service made an imperative
demand on his energies, he bore his labours with unshrinking resolution;
but now that the contest was over, and the security and influence of the
Government were restored, he felt the recoil severely. It was natural
that there should be mixed with this hope of recruiting his strength by
change of scene, a strong desire for repose. The stormy times he had
fallen upon in Ireland rendered his position there onerous and
oppressive. He had ridden the storm in safety, and had the satisfaction
of feeling that, whenever he retired from the Government, he would leave
to his successor, untrammelled by the associations and recollections of
the past, a comparatively easy task.