Perhaps "astonishment," after all, was the most convenient refuge for
Lord North, under the circumstances. But it is clear, throughout the
whole correspondence, that, let the responsibility rest where it might,
a delay--fraught with the worst consequences to the repose of the
kingdom--had been suffered to take place, greatly detrimental to the
public service, and personally compromising to Lord Temple. Lord North
himself acknowledges that from the 2nd to the 24th of April was consumed
in the pursuit of measures which ought to have been carried into
operation without delay. The new Ministry confess that they were three
weeks looking for a successor to Lord Temple, instead of having come
into office prepared to fill that important vacancy at once. They could
not plead ignorance of Lord Temple's determination to retire; for he had
apprised the Duke of Portland that his mind was made up before the
coalition was formed. There was no excuse for the protracted
inconvenience--public and private--to which Lord Temple was exposed,
except the fact that the Ministry, too eager in the chase of office, had
accepted the reins of Government before they were ready to undertake its
functions; and that it was not until the situation of Lord-Lieutenant
had been offered to one nobleman after another, they at last found a
peer who was willing to incur the hazard of serving under them in so
responsible a post. That Lord Temple should have expressed his feelings
strongly on this occasion, that he should have complained warmly of the
personal slight with which he was treated, and that he should have
represented with earnestness the injury inflicted on the public service
throughout this harassing interregnum, was due equally to his own
character, and to the duty he owed to the King. Instead of being enabled
to relinquish office to his successor with ease and satisfaction to
both, the affair was so hurried, that in the correspondence which ensued
between Lord Temple and Lord Northington, a tone of asperity insensibly
displaces the amicable dispositions with which it opens, and shows that
the political discord which had been sown by the "unprincipled
coalition," was not without a damaging influence upon the private
relations of public men. Lord Temple, after sacrificing much of his own
personal feelings to adapt his withdrawal to the convenience of Lord
Northington, at last expressed his resolution--at any risk of
consequences--not to be in Dublin on the 4th of June, the anniversary of
the King's birthday. To this point the correspondence, interspersed with
one or two letters from Lord North, is finally drawn.