Cleveland Row, Jan. 10th, 1799.
MY DEAREST BROTHER,
* * * It is for you to send news, and not to receive it, for
nothing is interesting just now but what relates to Ireland and the
Union. Twelve days bring us to the prologue, to this swelling
scene, as Shakspeare calls it. How long it will be before the
_denouement_, and what that _denouement_ will be, and what the
piece, who shall say?
Your chief Governor, you know, is not given to be very
communicative, either to his employers or to any one else; but I
collect from the statement in the newspapers that he has resolved
to adopt, without further reference here, the suggestions which
Lord Castlereagh carried over as to the members of the two Houses
in the United Parliament. I am very glad of it as to the House of
Lords, not only from parental fondness, but because on solid
grounds, as I think, I very much feared the effect of a septennial
election of fifty Peers not chosen by the very best possible bodies
of electors.
As to the House of Commons, it is almost entirely a question of
local expediency as to the best chance of satisfying _Messieurs les
interesses_; for you and I, who are not parliamentary reformers
(and, thank God, never were), do not hold very high the superior
virtue of a man chosen by one mode of election rather than by
another. I am, however, entirely satisfied that the plan of a
resident committee at Dublin was impracticable; and even if it had
not been so, the universal prejudice was so strong against it here,
on the part of everybody of every description who was talked to on
the subject, that it put the execution of such a plan totally out
of the question. The strongest, and with me quite decisive,
argument against it was the introduction into our Constitution of a
principle so perfectly novel and anomalous; the merit of the Scotch
Union having been, and that of the Irish being intended to be, its
simplicity, and the precision with which everything new is
accommodated to the existing state of our Constitution and
Government. In the Scotch Union, the Peerage was the only
exception; and in the present case we are, as you see, labouring to
bring even that point nearer to the actual practice.
Ever most affectionately yours,
G.
Lord Cornwallis had been avowedly selected for Ireland on account of his
military talents. But his Administration did not satisfy the Cabinet.
Lord Grenville, who confesses to the feeling of disappointment with
which he reflects upon the results of the appointment, makes allowances
for the failure on the ground that Lord Cornwallis undertook the office
unwillingly, and from a sense of public duty alone, and that he had
experienced nothing but disgusts and mortifications. In this case,
however, as in all former cases, the difficulty was to find a successor.
There was, also, another consideration which Lord Grenville points
out--the evils that always attended a change of Government in Ireland,
even from worse to better.