Pall Mall, Dec. 23rd, 1782.
My dear Brother,
When I wrote last to you, I expressed considerable hopes that
this tedious business was drawing near to a conclusion, and that
Government here would at last consent to grant the happiness and
peace of Great Britain and Ireland, to solicitations that I
should have been ashamed to have employed for any private
object, however near to me. These hopes are, I must confess,
weakened by my conversation of this morning with Townshend. I
can plainly see that he is himself personally disposed to comply
with your wishes. I can as plainly see that a greater and more
powerful minister sets himself against them.
Dec. 24th, 1782.
So far I had written yesterday, when I resolved to delay writing
further to you till to-day, on account of the promise which
Townshend gave me that he would see Lord Shelburne last night,
and press him upon the subject.
I have been with Townshend again this morning, and yet have
nothing like a decided answer to give you. He told me that
Thurlow made the most difficulty, but that Dunning seems to be
entirely with us. Yesterday he said that Shelburne talked much
of the advantages of holding high language. What the tenor of
Conway's language was, I have stated to you before. Of the rest
I know nothing. I own I am rather in doubt whether Lord
Shelburne acts upon a system of resuming, or only of gaining
time; neither of them is very pleasant or flattering to you.
Townshend appears to me to be most heartily and sincerely with
you; nothing can be more explicit than his language was to that
point. He complained of irresponsible Cabinet Ministers, and
seemed to throw it upon that. I then stated your impatience,
what you must feel, and asked how you could go on? I took out of
my pocket your three letters to me, of the 12th and 14th
instant, and read him such extracts as I thought would _express_
your opinion and your impatience, and would pretty strongly
_imply_ though not _express_ your determination upon the subject
of resigning. He took the hint, and said that he could not
wonder at any resolution you might take, and that he had told
the Cabinet so. To this I answered, that it was right for me not
to conceal from _him_ (though I did not mean it as a _formal_
declaration), that you certainly would not stay a moment there,
if you found the proposal of a Bill of recognition either
negatived or put off longer. He repeated that he could not
wonder at it. He then charged me with a commission to write to
you this evening, and to say that although nothing was yet done,
he would labour to the utmost of his power that your wishes
should be complied with, and that he hoped to bring the business
to a conclusion _in a very few days_; that in the meantime he
thought that his writing an official despatch, which should not
be explicit, would be by no means pleasant to you. In this I
agreed most fully.
The difficulty, he told me, lay in bringing them to think of
anything but the peace, by which you see that business is still
_en train_.
This consideration makes me less eager than I should otherwise
be to cut the matter short. I continue to think, that if they
are sufficiently pressed, you will carry your point; because I
am fully persuaded they will not push you to the wall. In the
meantime they feel the situation into which the notice for the
House of Commons has thrown them; for Townshend expressed his
satisfaction at it to-day, and said it lay a necessity on
Government to do something.
While I am writing this, I receive your letters of the 21st. The
despatch will, I think, have a good effect in pressing the thing
forward, and assisting the exertions which I sincerely believe
Townshend will make. At the same time, as it must now be the
27th at soonest before you can receive this letter, which leaves
everything exactly where my last despatches to you did, I should
think upon the receipt of it you would do well to write a letter
to Townshend, rather demanding than requesting an immediate
answer.
What I mean is (if you should approve of the idea), that you
should say, "that after having so repeatedly stated the grounds
of your proposal, to which you can now add nothing," (because
any reasoning of yours brings on more discussion) "except that
every day gives fresh force to them, you have nothing left but
to request, as your situation entitles you to do, that you may
at last have an immediate and explicit answer, in order that on
the one hand you may not disgrace your personal honour and the
faith of Great Britain by continuing to pledge them to
assurances which are not to be performed, nor on the other hand
appear by remaining in your situation without a favourable
answer, to countenance a system which your own mind informs you
to be at once unjust and impracticable." If you think the
expressions too strong, or not sufficiently so, you will weaken
or aggravate them; but I am very impatient to receive some such
letter, which shall _not_ enter into reasons or discussion on a
subject so completely exhausted, but shall manifest your own
intention, which I am convinced will operate more strongly than
all the argument in the world.
You will perhaps say that I have already in my possession such a
paper. But I must own I feel great difficulty in fixing the
exact moment when to make use of it, and when to say that I can
no longer in justice to you give credit to assurances of an
immediate determination so often repeated and so often found
fallacious. With you, who have received none such, there is no
such difficulty. Besides, the letter in my hands can only
operate as an actual resignation on your behalf, and authorized
by you; whereas the letter from you, which I propose, would
operate as a threat, and by that means prevent, I believe, the
event itself; or if not, it would at least convince your
feelings, as well as mine, most unequivocally of the absolute
necessity for taking such a measure, as the only one by which
you could preserve either integrity of character or uprightness
of conduct. Such a letter might, if the winds do not prevent it,
be here in a week from this day; and before that time I am most
thoroughly convinced I shall receive not a single word further
than I have already. With such a letter to deliver to Townshend,
I should think myself authorized to _demand_ a Cabinet; or if I
could not obtain that, to make use of your former letter, and
desire from you that I might see the King, to state to him your
sense of the impracticability of such a system, and of the
certainty that Government will be compelled in October to make
concessions without gaining any advantage by them, infinitely
greater than what would in January conciliate the affections of
all Ireland.
One way or other, this business does most certainly draw to a
conclusion. I allow, by this proposal, one week more for them to
take their resolution. If they delay it beyond that, it is in
effect the most mortifying and the most insulting way of
refusing it that they could have adopted; and as such I think
you would do right to state it in your letter. But whichever way
it terminates, I think we shall derive the greatest advantage
from Townshend's having authorized me to promise that on the
21st something should be done in the English House of Commons,
and having sat by and acquiesced in my saying that _that_
something would, I _apprehended_, be brought forward by
Government. If it is not, I think I need not say what a
situation they stand in; and what ours will be--how much better
than if nothing had been said. On the other hand, if they do
authorize me to bring forward, or bring forward themselves, on
that day, a satisfactory Bill, we shall derive much more
advantage to Government from having given an early notice of it,
and much more personal credit from its coming through my mouth
from you, than if it had been done only by the Minister, and
kept back till the 21st.
I have had no communication with Lord Shelburne, nor have I
either seen or heard from him since I spoke in the House of
Commons. I mean, however, to-morrow to write to him on the
strength of having received fresh despatches from you, and to
press him in the strongest manner, that _the Bill to be_
proposed on the 21st, may be such as will satisfy your wishes by
satisfying the people of Ireland. What the new reason for delay
will be, God knows. In the meantime is it not inconceivable that
a man will hazard so much, in every sense of the word, so much
credit as a Minister, so much in point of character, and so much
in point of weight and support to his administration, without
its being possible for one to discover any one object under
Heaven which he is to gain by the delay? Possibly such a letter
as I wish from you may succeed in bringing him to his senses; if
not, I am sure the sooner your hands are washed of it the
better; for if the rest of your administration in Ireland is to
go on in the same manner, and you are to be left for months
together without knowing whether Government here will expressly
support or expressly contradict you, and all this only that they
may gain time, without having anything further to gain, such a
situation is neither suited for such tempers as we have, nor for
such characters as I hope we shall ever preserve together.
The real grievance seems to be, what did hang as a dead weight
upon the last administration till it pulled it down, and what
must hang as the same dead weight upon this--I mean a Cabinet of
eleven. If these are disunited, there are not wanting, even
among themselves, men to publish it to the world; and how is it
possible that they should be otherwise, except by the means of
that delightful expedient which I stated to you once before, and
which was again alluded to in yesterday's conversation. I should
hope, however, that the appearance of your resolution will put
an end to this scene of procrastination, disgraceful to you and
dangerous to the country; if it does not, I am sure the
resolution itself is most absolutely necessary to vindicate us
to ourselves, as well as to others, from the consequences which
we both foresee.
In the meantime, my dear brother, I cannot close this letter
without expressing to you the extreme pleasure and satisfaction
which I feel when, after having confided so much to my
discretion, you express yourself satisfied that, however
unsuccessful I may have been, the failure of my endeavours to
procure this long-expected answer has not been owing to any want
of zeal or judgment in me, but to those to whom the consequences
are really to be imputed, and who have on that account already
made themselves most deeply responsible both to God and their
country.
Believe me, my dear brother,
Ever most sincerely and affectionately yours,
W. W. G.
D'Ivernois is here, and going over almost immediately to Ireland
with two other _commissaires_.
If any decision should drop from the skies before I receive your
letter to Townshend, I will suppress it entirely.