St. James's Place, May 25th, 1783.
My dear Lord,
Your Excellency has not been able to remove those unpleasant and
mortifying ideas I entertain at the thoughts of being obliged to
pay either no attention to a day, to which all honour and
respect is due, or to do it in a manner unbecoming, and not
suitable to the occasion. Indeed, my information by numerous
Irish gentlemen now here, tells me that, although it may not be
expected that I should give (what your Lordship says) _a dinner_
on the occasion, it will be expected I shall hold a Court, and
that I shall give a ball. Then I understand likewise, from your
letters, as you declare your positive and fixed resolution not
to hold a _Court_ on that day in the despatch, the last but one
which I had the honour to receive, and that from strong reasons
of delicacy, both public and private, which, as your Excellency
does not explain, at this distance and in my state of ignorance
at present I am at a loss to conceive.
I have the honour to be, my dear Lord,
Your faithful and obedient humble servant,
Northington.
Lord Temple's administration was too brief to enable him to develop the
plans he had laid down for the benefit of Ireland; but the most
conclusive testimony that can be adduced in favour of his policy is the
assurance he received from Lord North, that no intention of deviating
from it was entertained by the new Ministers. Although, however, Lord
Northington did not openly deviate from the main points of his policy,
he followed it up with a luke-warmness and insincerity that rendered it
to a great extent inoperative. His Lordship appears to have betrayed,
not only in his measures, but in the spirit and tone in which they were
brought forward, an unworthy desire to discredit the influence and
reputation of his predecessor, who pursued a line of conduct after he
left Ireland which--putting aside all obligations to the
public--entitled him at least to protection against such sinister
attempts to undermine the confidence his zealous services had acquired.
Having resigned the Government into the hands of Lord Northington, to
whom he frankly offered all the assistance and information his
experience enabled him to bestow, he strictly avoided all interference
in Irish affairs that might be likely--even remotely--to embarrass his
successor. Numerous applications were made to him on a variety of
subjects; individuals and parties sought his advice and interposition;
but he made the same answer to all--referring them at once to the
established authority, and declining to use any influence, upon the most
trifling occasions, which in his position he might have legitimately
exercised. His magnanimity was thrown away upon a thankless soil. The
situation he had filled with so much honour and advantage, was now
occupied by a nobleman who could neither appreciate nor imitate his
lofty example.
The principal objects to which Lord Temple had directed his attention
were the Bill of Renunciation, and a wise economy in the public
expenditure. The former he carried; the latter it was impossible to
consolidate in the short term of six months. In his indefatigable
labours for the good of Ireland he never stooped to conciliate faction
at the cost of duty, or the sacrifice of principle. He administered his
high office to promote the interests, and not to pander to the passions
of the people. The Bill of Renunciation was said to have been a scheme
of Mr. Flood's; but by taking charge of it himself, Lord Temple deprived
it of the mischievous _prestige_ it might have acquired under such
dangerous auspices. The Bill, however, was not Mr. Flood's. Whatever
merit, or demerit attaches to it, belongs exclusively to Lord Temple.
Lord Northington, overlooking the fact that this Bill was simply a
confirmation of the settlement of 1782, and that it really granted
nothing new, endeavoured to make it a fulcrum for working further
changes and more extensive concessions--not, it may be presumed, without
an indirect view to the improvement of his own popularity. The mode in
which he thus proposed to carry out Lord Temple's policy provoked the
Government, at last, to remonstrate with him. Even Mr. Fox, who could
not be suspected of any disinclination to give a patient hearing to
Irish demands, seeing the part he had already taken on such questions,
felt it necessary to check his exuberant zeal on behalf of the
particular party, whose views and opinions he had so injudiciously
adopted. On the 8th of November, he wrote to Lord Northington an
admonishing letter upon a variety of points connected with Irish
affairs, towards the conclusion of which he observed:
I hope, my dear Northington, you will not consider this long
letter as meant to blame your conduct; but I think I owe it as
much to my friendship for you as to the public, to give you
fairly my opinion and advice in your most arduous situation; and
I will fairly own there is one principle which seems to run
through your different _despatches_, which a little alarms me:
it is this--you seem to think as if it were absolutely necessary
at the outset of your Government, to do something that may
appear to be obtaining _boons_, however trifling, to Ireland;
and what I confess I like still less, is to see that this is, in
some degree, grounded upon the ampleness of former concessions.
Now I see this in quite a different light, and reason that,
because these concessions were so ample, no further ones are
necessary. If, because the Duke of Portland gave much, are you
to give something? Consider how this reasoning will apply to
your successor. I repeat it again, the account must be
considered as closed in 1782.[1]
[Footnote 1: Extracted from a letter published in the Life of Mr.
Grattan.]
It may be observed, _en parenthèse_, that the assertion that the Duke of
Portland gave much, is a gratuitous assumption. When his Grace came into
office, he found the Renunciation Bill passing through its last stages,
and he suffered it to pass; but, as Mr. Fox states in this very letter,
with the utmost reluctance. The Duke of Portland, in fact, gave nothing.
He submitted to the measure of his predecessors because he could not
avoid it, and he would have retreated from it if he could.
No useful result would be gained by a comparison between the
intelligible principles and consistency evinced by Lord Temple in his
government of Ireland, and the small views and tremulous policy of his
successor; but it is something to the purpose of history to note that,
while Lord Northington affected to adopt the economical system of Lord
Temple, he secretly desired to stultify it, and that so far from being
actuated by any sentiment of respect for the government of his
predecessor, he suffered the motions of thanks which both Houses of
Parliament voted to Lord Temple, when they met in the following October,
to pass without a solitary expression of approval on the part of any
member of the Administration. These facts are somewhat indignantly
stated in a letter addressed to Lord Temple, by Lord Mornington, on the
18th of October, 1783. Respecting the vote of thanks, his Lordship
observes:
Government had not the spirit to take a part against the motions
of thanks in either House, _but I have every reason to think
that they would have done it, if there had been the smallest
prospect of success in the attempt_. You must observe that the
vote of the House of Commons is much weaker than that of the
Lords; Gardiner was obliged, by the interference of Government's
friends, to omit several expressions which, if they had been
retained, would have rendered the vote more just to your
Lordship's Administration, but would have occasioned debate. The
fact is, that no compliment to the Act of Renunciation, or even
to the framer of it, can be borne with patience by certain
supporters of the present Castle.
And in the report of his own speech on this occasion, which accompanies
the letter, Lord Mornington plainly charges the Government with
duplicity in reference to Lord Temple's system of economy. Referring to
a passage in the Lord-Lieutenant's speech, where his Excellency, in
recommending the establishment of the Genevans, reminded Parliament of
their duty to "avoid _unnecessary expense_," his Lordship expresses a
hope that in "other cases, where all profusion would be dangerous, and
where the public safety demanded the most rigid economy, _in the
establishments of Government, his Excellency would think it_ HIS _duty
to avoid all unnecessary expense_;" and then, comparing the
recommendation respecting the Genevans with another passage where his
Excellency applied for a supply, and in which "his Excellency's economy
made no appearance," Lord Mornington goes on to say:
Comparing the two passages of the speech, he [Lord Mornington]
was apt to imagine that the expression, "unnecessary expense,"
was dictated by another spirit, and with other views, than of
saving to the public: he suspected that it was meant to
insinuate by so special, and seemingly superfluous a
recommendation of economy in the further progress of the
establishment of the Genevans, that there had been some neglect
of economy in the original foundation of the scheme; if that was
meant, he called upon the confidential servants of the Castle to
avow it; if not, he insisted that they should do justice to the
personage who had originally framed this plan, and disclaim his
construction of this ambiguous phrase. _He knew what had been
the language of the Castle on this subject; he knew how this
scheme had been decried; and what a damp had been cast upon the
proposers of it_--such a damp, as he had reason to believe, that
the settlement had not advanced one step since the departure of
Lord Temple; and he would add, in justice both to the late and
present Ministry, that he, in his conscience, believed, if the
public were put to any _unnecessary expense_ by the settlement,
_it must be attributed solely and entirely to the delays and
impediments which had been thrown in its way by the present
Castle_.
On a subsequent day, moving the thanks of the House to Lord Temple, Lord
Mornington delivered an eloquent panegyric upon his Government. He spoke
of the Act of Renunciation as having produced an "instantaneous calm in
Ireland," and, adverting to other matters, observed:
These were the great public acts of Lord Temple's Government,
the nation at large had felt their effects, the Lord-Lieutenant
had from the throne applauded them; the House itself had
applauded them in detail, and therefore would not object to
doing so in the gross, which he now called upon the House to do.
With regard to the general attention of Lord Temple to the
common duties of his office, and his management of the interior
system of government here, he would deliver no opinion of his
own; he would appeal to those whose high stations and
confidential offices gave them constant access to the person and
councils of Lord Temple, to testify his ability and assiduity in
business, the extent of his researches, the vigilance with which
he penetrated into the secrets of departments where the most
gross rapine and peculation had been practised for ages with
impunity, _and particularly the firm integrity with which he
resisted all jobs, however speciously concealed, or powerfully
recommended_.
Nothing need be added to this unimpeachable eulogium on the character of
Lord Temple's administration of the Government of Ireland. It comes from
an authority above suspicion, and its statements will guide the
decisions of history.
In the midst of these political anxieties there was a private grief,
arising out of the sundering of attachments consequent upon the
unnatural state of parties, that preyed severely on the sensitive mind
of Lord Temple. This painful matter forms the subject of a letter from
Lord Temple to his brother, Mr. Thomas Grenville, which has not been
inserted in its chronological place, as it would have interrupted the
sequence of the preceding correspondence. The tender and affectionate
feelings hitherto subsisting unimpaired between the brothers, who, in
addition to the rest of their noble qualities, were distinguished beyond
most men by their domestic virtues, had been interrupted by one of those
fatal divisions in public life, which, during this memorable crisis,
separated the closest friends.
The particular occasion which now for the first time produced disunion
between Lord Temple and his brother, is not expressly stated in the
letter; but it may be surmised from the correspondence which took place
early in the preceding year between Mr. Thomas Grenville and Mr. Fox,
when the former was employed upon the American negotiation in Paris. Mr.
Thomas Grenville, devoting himself to the interests of Mr. Fox, still
preserved his allegiance to him under the arrangements of the Coalition
Administration; and, from certain expressions in this letter, it would
appear that he had ventured to make some overture to Lord Temple, with a
view to induce him to reconsider the line of action he had resolved
upon, if indeed it did not amount to the distinct proposal of an office
under the new Ministry. The exact nature of that offer is veiled under
the language of a poignant and bitter regret, which seeks to avoid
details the writer was most unwilling to enter into; but it is
sufficiently explicit as to the "new connection" Mr. Thomas Grenville
had formed, in an opposite direction to that which Lord Temple's
devotion to the principles they held in common had led him to embrace.
The sensibility manifested by Lord Temple in reference to this unhappy
affair, shows that his heart was as impressionable as his judgment was
clear and firm.