Holwood, April 26th, 1791.
MY DEAR BROTHER,
I should certainly be much to blame if I were insensible to the
kindness of your last letter, though written under an impression,
in the justice of which I should be very sorry indeed to acquiesce.
I have little time for justifications on that subject, but my
anxiety to remove such an impression makes me say that I am not
conscious to myself of any want of that confidence towards you,
which our friendship demands, and which I wish to be reciprocal.
But that I neither ask of you, nor can think that you require from
me, the breach of actual or even of implied engagements to others,
not to divulge points in which they are concerned. A strict
observance of such engagements is surely the condition of all
honourable intercourse in society, and a duty from which no degree
of confidence, friendship, or affection towards a third person, can
absolve one. With respect to this particular case of the Duke of
L., I am sure your own reflections will not suffer you to impute
blame to me, if after having required from those with whom he was
acting an engagement of secrecy, which he had a right to demand
from them, his own levity, or any other reason, induced him to
divulge his own secret. Ask yourself, and I will leave the subject
there, whether you had rather have known this event, as has been
now the case, a day or two later than you might otherwise have
done, or have been the occasion of my doing an act which my own
mind would have reproached me with as dishonourable in itself, and
in this particular instance a breach of a positive promise which I
had given.
Surely if I am deserving of your confidence, or any man's, it can
only be so long as I feel the nature of such confidence, and fulfil
the obligations which it imposes upon me, even where the violation
of them might be of real advantage to you, much more where it could
have answered no one purpose of utility, or even of gratification.
All I can add is, that if I see this subject in too serious a
light, or entertain ideas too strict with respect to it, my
impressions upon it are at least those of serious reflection; and
that they are the same which direct my conduct towards the few
other persons who have a right, and none has so much right as
yourself, to affection and confidence from me.
I have anticipated your advice, and taken refuge here. I feel
already the advantage of air, and of rather more exercise than I
have been able lately to allow myself. I am sorry if my former
letter bore the appearance of depression, but you know that my mind
has not been at ease on other subjects, and will therefore allow
for the effect of the weight of fresh labour and anxiety suddenly
thrown upon me.
Ever, my dear brother,
Most truly and affectionately yours,
G.
The Duke of Leeds resigned on the 8th of June, and was succeeded by Mr.
Dundas.
At this moment, not England alone, but all Europe, was engrossed by the
strange drama that was going forward in Paris. The first piece of
intelligence that arrived was an announcement that the King and the
royal family had effected their escape at night from the Tuileries by a
subterranean passage leading to the Seine; and, as it afterwards
appeared, that His Majesty had left behind him a paper formally
revoking, on the grounds of compulsion, the oaths and declarations to
which he had been forced to subscribe. Lord Grenville conveyed the
startling news, just as it had reached him, in a hasty note to Lord
Buckingham.