The line of policy Lord Fitzwilliam intended to adopt was intimated at
the opening of the Parliament in January. Mr. Grattan moved the Address
in answer to the Speech; a little later Mr. Conolly withdrew his
opposition to the prorogation in deference to the wishes of Government;
and the old supporters of the Administration were displaced by the
Ponsonbys and their connections. Remembering how all these men had acted
in the Regency business, the obstructions they had thrown in the way of
the public service, and the vindictive opposition they had given to his
measures, Lord Buckingham was deeply wounded by the apparent sanction
extended to this complete change of system, which he regarded as a
disavowal of the course he had pursued in Ireland, and, in some sort, as
a personal indignity. In his communications with Lord Grenville he
stated his feelings on this subject without reserve. He considered that
in assenting to the appointment of Lord Fitzwilliam, after the damaging
disclosures that had taken place, the Cabinet had abandoned him to the
obloquy of that party against whose inveterate hostility he had
successfully preserved the executive union of the two kingdoms; and this
consideration was embittered by the reflection that Lord Grenville, from
his position in the Ministry, had contributed influentially to place him
in that humiliating light before the public. Lord Buckingham, with his
acute sense of what was due to his own honour, looked at the question
from that point alone; but Lord Grenville, in the discharge of his
responsibilities as a Cabinet Minister, was compelled to take a more
comprehensive view of it. Whether he decided rightly or wrongly, there
can be no doubt that he decided conscientiously, and that it was
impossible he could resolve upon any conclusion likely to be painful to
Lord Buckingham which his affection for him would not render equally
painful to himself. But he felt at the same time that his duty demanded
at his hands the sacrifice of his private feelings, and that this was a
case in which any hesitation upon such grounds would be attended by the
gravest consequences to the Administration. It may be seen, also, from
the following letter, that he did not put the same construction upon
these transactions as that which was so sensitively urged by Lord
Buckingham. His more practical mind discerned in the irresistible
necessity of the position a sufficient answer to all individual
scruples; and maintaining, as he had stated in a former letter, that the
security and repose of Ireland depended, not upon this or that set of
men, which his observation of the character of the people and their
politics had led him to regard with comparative indifference, but upon
the soundness of the measures applied to her condition, he could not
admit that the decision which had been come to with respect to Lord
Fitzwilliam implied, even remotely, a disavowal of the line of conduct
Lord Buckingham had so successfully pursued under totally different
circumstances.