Dover Street, Jan. 5th, 1795.
MY DEAR BROTHER,
As I keep no copies of my letters to you, and have neither time
enough, nor a mind sufficiently disengaged, to measure my
expressions, nor have ever accustomed myself to do so in writing to
you, all I can say on the subject of my last letter is, that if it
conveyed to you any impression different from that of the sincere
friendship and affection which dictated it, it very ill expressed
my feelings.
With respect to the rest, I can only say that, to the best of my
understanding, I have neither disavowed nor abandoned you, but
given a _very strong_ proof of my determination to do neither; that
I cannot believe that any such impression exists anywhere; that not
knowing the proofs of its existence, to which you refer, I can only
guess at them, and I therefore forbear to make upon them the
remarks to which, if my conjecture is right, they are so obviously
liable. But that I am at a loss even to guess at the meaning of
that part of your letter, which speaks of proofs laying before you
of some compact made on this subject above twelve months since, not
having, in my own mind, the smallest idea of the fact to which this
can refer.
Having never had any intention to disavow you, or to consent to any
system or measure to which I thought you could wish to object, it
was impossible for me to make to you any previous communication of
such intention.
The detail of all that passed respecting Lord Fitzwilliam's
appointment would be too long to go into now; and I have reason to
believe that you are not unacquainted with many of the
circumstances which would prove how very little idea there was of
concealment or mystery on my part respecting that subject. From the
first moment that you stated to me that you considered the idea of
giving to the Ponsonbys a share of office in Ireland as a measure
injurious to you, I explained to you my reasons for viewing it in a
different light. But I anxiously reconsidered the object in my own
mind, and I then acted, as I was bound to do, on my deliberate and
fixed opinion respecting a point which, in either view of it, was
of much too great public importance to make it possible for me to
decide it merely on the desire I must ever feel to consult your
wishes in preference to my own. Which of us is right in our view of
this question, it is not for me to say. The motives and grounds of
my opinion remain the same; and I see with regret that they do not
make on your mind the impression they have made on mine.
It would be a painful and invidious task to discuss the question
further; but I cannot receive from you a letter in which you tell
me that you feel you have lost my affection, without repeating to
you the assurance, which I still hope is not indifferent to you,
that this is not, in the smallest degree, the case. I have intended
to do nothing towards you but what should be the _most_ kind and
affectionate. I think I have so acted; but I am sure that I have so
meant to act. If any contrary impression produces in your mind any
feelings different from those which have made so great a part of my
happiness throughout life, I shall deeply regret what seems to be
annexed as a curse inseparable from the pursuit of a public life;
but I will once more beg you to be assured that neither those
feelings on your part, nor anything which they can produce, will
vary my sincere and heartfelt affection towards you, and that
whether my judgment has been right, as I still think it has, or
wrong, as you think it, my heart is, and shall be, uniformly and
invariably the same towards you.
It is with these sentiments that I shall ever be, my dearest
brother,
Most sincerely and affectionately yours,
GRENVILLE.
Lord Fitzwilliam had scarcely arrived in Ireland when he collected about
him the party with whom he had been in previous communication, and
commenced his new system by a series of dismissals of the former
supporters of Mr. Pitt's Government. Announcing his conviction that the
immediate concession of the Catholic claims was indispensable to the
tranquillity and security of the country, he followed up his objects
with a vigour and expedition that created considerable alarm in England.
The Attorney-General was to be displaced, to make way for Mr. George
Ponsonby; the Solicitor-General was also to be removed, and Mr.
Beresford, who was Purse-bearer to the Chancellor, and Mr. Cooke,
Secretary at War, were to be dismissed. The dismissal of Mr. Beresford
was regarded as a measure of such extreme violence that it brought
matters to an issue between Lord Fitzwilliam and the Cabinet. Some
letters at this time from Mr. Cooke to Lord Buckingham present a
striking _coup d'oeil_ of these affairs, as they appeared to one who was
deeply interested in their progress. Lord Fitzwilliam, it should be
observed, arrived in Ireland on the 5th of January, and the rapidity of
his official movements may be inferred from the date of the first of the
following letters, which was written only ten days afterwards.