Whitehall, May 5th, 1733.
My Lord,
The anxiety which your Excellency felt in writing your letter of
the 24th of last month, cannot, I will venture to affirm,
possibly exceed my surprise at receiving it. Having, during the
very little time that I have been in office, made it my object
to return the most speedy answers to all your Excellency's
letters, and having had the good fortune in every instance to
convey the most favourable return all to your Excellency's
wishes and commands, you may well suppose that I must have been
much struck at reading your complaints of ill-treatment,
indelicacy, or something (whatever it may be) that deserves a
harsher name. If, in the course of my life, it had not been
frequently my lot to see very great offence taken upon very
slight causes, the terms of your Excellency's letter would have
given me more uneasiness. But, upon a calm and dispassionate
review of your complaints, and of the conduct of His Majesty's
servants, I can, by no means, either in their name, or in my
own, plead guilty to the neglects and other misbehaviour which
your Excellency thinks proper to lay to our charge.
Your Excellency is of opinion, that His Majesty's servants
should have employed themselves in endeavouring to find a
successor to your Excellency from the receipt of your letter of
the 12th of March. If your Excellency will give yourself the
trouble to recollect the transactions of that period, you will,
I am sure, concur with me in opinion, that it would have been
the extreme of folly and presumption for any of His Majesty's
present servants to have treated upon this subject with any
person breathing before the 2nd of April, when they had the
honour of kissing His Majesty's hand. Long after the day of the
receipt of your Excellency's letter, it was perfectly uncertain
here, to whose hands His Majesty would commit the management of
his affairs; nay, your Excellency cannot be ignorant, that,
since that time, the expectations (and I doubt not the hopes) of
the public were fixed upon seeing your Excellency at the head of
the Administration.
The 2nd of April was, therefore, the first moment that any of
His Majesty's present servants could take any step towards the
nomination of a new Chief Governor of Ireland. From that time
measures for that purpose have been constantly pursued, till the
affair was finally settled, on the 24th of last month. The
various impediments which have arisen I need not mention to your
Excellency, but the fact is exactly as I have stated; and, as
the delay is not unprecedented, nor even very long, I think it
is not trespassing too much upon your Excellency's candour to
expect that you will believe my assertion.
In your last letter, your Excellency seems hurt, that the London
newspapers should have announced in Dublin the appointment of
the Earl of Northington two days before you received my letter.
Whatever might have been the information or the conjectures of
the news-writers, I assure your Excellency that I wrote within
an hour after I received authentic information of that
appointment.
As to the total and absolute neglect of Irish considerations, on
which your Excellency expresses yourself so strongly, you
certainly cannot mean to allude to the ordinary and current
business (which has been regularly attended to, and has met with
the most speedy decision that each case would admit of), but to
some great commercial points, upon which your Excellency had
written at different times to the late Administration, and which
had not, as I collect from your Excellency's letter, been
considered, when they quitted His Majesty's service.
I well remember, that Lord Carlisle very fully and clearly
stated, very earnestly and repeatedly pressed, the demands of
Ireland, with respect to the refusal of Portugal to admit their
woollen goods. Lord Hillsborough, then Secretary of State, urged
the claim of Ireland with much zeal and perseverance in his
despatches to the Court of Portugal, and in his conferences with
the Portuguese Minister in London. What was done in that
business by the late Administration I know not: nothing of that
sort has yet come to my knowledge; but, during the few days that
we have been in office, the Secretary of State for the Foreign
Department has renewed this negotiation with Monsieur de Pinto,
and I doubt not but it will be pursued with all the attention
that so important a question deserves. But it is singular, that
His Majesty's present servants should be criminated for not
having finished in the first busy three weeks of a new
Administration what has been depending during the two last
Ministries, and, notwithstanding the efforts of one of them at
least, is by no means so far advanced as to promise an immediate
conclusion.
That the interests of Ireland should not be separated from those
of Great Britain in any commercial treaty with France and Spain,
and that they should be considered in every arrangement with the
United States of America, are important truths, upon which your
Excellency, with much propriety, lays a great stress. They
cannot be urged too often or too strongly; but whether your
Excellency has any particular measures to suggest on these
heads, or whether the late Administration, when they signed the
provisional articles, and projected the commercial treaties with
the House of Bourbon, had formed any detailed and digested plan
upon these principles, I am not informed; but this is certain,
that it would have been very hasty and rash, for His Majesty's
servants in the first hurry of a new arrangement, before any
commercial treaty is formed with America, or the definitive
treaties signed with France and Spain, to think themselves
capable of proposing a well-formed system of commerce, adapted
to the new situation of Great Britain with her late and present
dependencies.
Your Excellency will consider, that we came to the situations we
now possess, in the midst of a session of Parliament, with
almost all the material business of that session unfinished,
indeed, hardly begun, and that, besides Parliamentary affairs,
there never was a time in which the Executive Power was occupied
with a greater variety of complicated and important questions.
Many of the matters to which your Excellency alludes, must
necessarily employ the attention of His Majesty's Ministers for
a long space of time. Your Excellency will, therefore, I hope,
judge of our exertions according to the capacities of ordinary
men, and not according to the rapidity of your Excellency's
conceptions, and the eagerness of your zeal for the prosperity
of Ireland.
I beg pardon for detaining your Excellency so long, but I trust
that what I have written may serve to justify me to your
Excellency, when I confess, that the heavy and severe censures
in your Excellency's letter have produced no other emotions in
my mind than those of astonishment.
I have the honour to be, with the greatest truth and respect, My Lord,
Your Excellency's most obedient humble servant,
North.