Ph[oe]nix Lodge, May 9th, 1783.
Dear Brother,
Your letter, which mentions one written some time since, came
yesterday to my hands; and upon the same day came a monthly
account from Coutts, by which I see that, by Welles's neglect,
and by the delay of my stewards, I had unknowingly drawn for the
expenses of my departure beyond my state; but as it is proper
that your wants should be supplied, I have writ to Frogatt, to
order him to let you have some £500 from some money of mine in
his hands; and I will let you have more as soon as I can.
The remainder of your letter gives me, indeed, the most sensible
concern, for it shows me that line broken, which I was still in
hopes was only strained; for this is the only interpretation
which I can put upon that offer, which (from the most honourable
motives) you have made to me; and the only wish which I can now
form, is that you may never reflect for whom, and for what, you
have sacrificed that political and intimate connexion, which
nature had pointed out, and which till this moment I had not
despaired of. One opportunity presented itself in which you
could have done me essential service: I never can regret the
eagerness with which I entreated from you that proof of
affection, because I still feel how much I would have
sacrificed, to have preserved our bond inviolate; that, with
many other prospects, is now gone, and I am to feel that I have
lost that confidence, that good-will and attachment which you
have given to a friendship, which, for obvious reasons, I must
ever regret. I do not speak this in resentment and reproach, my
feelings are far above them, but in sober and earnest grief of
mind. I must remind you that no personal friendship, no party or
political consideration, could have guided the steps which I
took in June last; to which, in terms the most decisive, you
marked your line of separation. The same public principles (for
with no one person in England have I correspondence) have
decided me in the present moment, and in neither path have we
met; and parting upon such a question as that of the present
system (upon which I feel everything as a public man, and as a
private man have the sensations which naturally result from
personal insult), I fear that we have (at least for some time)
little chance of seeing those affections vibrate in unison which
I feel so strongly strained. Once more let me entreat you (for I
am not ashamed to entreat) to reconsider this well. If your new
connexion replaces to you that affectionate interest which from
my childhood I have borne to you; if your line holds out to you
that honourable satisfaction, which I trust you would not have
lost by a cordial union of objects and dispositions with me, I
fear that I speak in vain; but if you give that play to your
reason, to your affection, and to every feeling which Providence
has given, as the cement of the tenderest and most intimate
connexions, remember that in offering to you my heart, I mean to
offer to you everything which the truest love can give you, but
what must and can depend only on the closest union. Weigh this
well, and may every good angel guide your decision. Adieu.
Lord Temple must have been the more distressed by the course his brother
had taken on this occasion, from the evidences he received of the
sanction of other friends, who were governed in their own conduct by his
example. These proofs of attachment and approval, while they afforded
the most gratifying testimony to the rectitude of his views, touched him
deeply in contrast with the alienation of his brother.
Only a few days before he wrote this letter to Mr. Thomas Grenville, we
find Lord Bulkeley addressing him in the following terms, alluding to
the communication in which Lord Temple had informed him of his
determination to resign. "I had great pleasure," observes the writer,
"in receiving your last very kind letter, and in learning from yourself
the line you meant to take at a critical conjuncture like the present,
when the candidates for honour and principle are so reduced in number,
that those who forego great situations to bring them forward again, have
every title to confidence and support, and deserve every honest and
independent encouragement. You may naturally suppose I have not been
without solicitations from the Coalition Government; I have given but
one answer, which was that I shall certainly act with you, and more
especially as your conduct in resigning gave me, if possible, a greater
opinion of and veneration for your character than I could by any means
express."
Such testimonies were consolatory in the difficult position in which
Lord Temple was placed; but, instead of alleviating the pain he felt at
his separation from his brother in public life, they embittered it by
the conviction that one whom he loved so sincerely should have adopted a
line of action which he in his conscience believed to be erroneous.
It will be observed that in writing to Mr. Thomas Grenville, Lord Temple
alludes to a former letter, which evidently had not reached its
destination. The circumstance would be unimportant in itself, were there
not reason to believe that it formed part of a regular system of
_espionnage_ to which the whole of Lord Temple's correspondence was
subjected. The establishment of such an inquisition into the letters of
so high a functionary as the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland seems
incredible, and nothing short of the most decisive proofs of the fact
could justify even a suspicion of its existence. But there are passages
in these letters which leave no doubt whatever that Lord Temple's
correspondence, both private and public, was inspected in London while
he yet held office in Ireland, and that the same course continued to be
carried on after he returned to England. Nor was the _espionnage_
limited to mere perusal, frequent allusions to miscarriages leading to
the inference that his letters were sometimes suppressed altogether.
There are no means of determining with whom this system originated. All
that appears to be certain is, that it was practised during the period
of the Shelburne Cabinet, and followed up under the Coalition; and that
after it had been detected, no secret was made about it, either by Lord
Temple or his intimate correspondents.
Writing to Colonel Dundas, Lord Temple says, apparently under the
apprehension that his letter would be read by others, "Obvious
circumstances will prevent my going into the discussion of details in a
post letter." And to a friend in Ireland, he speaks still more
explicitly: "As almost every letter," he observes, "received or written
by me is opened, it is possible that this may undergo that operation in
London; and if so, they will learn the real regard I bear to you." Mr.
Cuff, writing to Lord Temple, from Dublin, in the November of this year,
declares that he expects nothing less than that his letter will be
opened and read. The passage is too remarkable to be omitted.
I should not now trouble your Lordship with a letter, but
that I find to a certainty, that letters to and from your Lordship
are not only opened and read, but many of them are stopped.
If this should happen to get into your Lordship's hands, you
will see, by what I have written on the outside of it, that I am
willing to compromise with those _honourable gentlemen_ who
open and read your letters, and that I have no objections to
their opening and reading, provided they will afterwards forward
them to you.
Your Lordship mentions a letter you wrote to me about three
or four weeks since, relative to the Genevois and their houses.
I have never received a letter from your Lordship since you left
Ireland, except one dated the 20th of July, and your last of the
23rd of October. I had the honour to write to your Lordship
about the 20th or 25th of September, thanking you for your
letter of the 20th of July, and telling you (what I can say with
truth) that I prize it more than all my other possessions upon
earth. I did not know, when I wrote that letter, that it would
be opened and read, else I should have declared my sentiments
more freely; but as I am almost certain that this one will be
opened, I shall be more full.
Know all men, therefore, by these presents, openers of letters,
and others, that I am more attached to your Lordship than to
all the rest of the world; not because you gave me a place of
£400 a year at the Barrack Board, but because I think you
have more sense, honour, and firmness, than all the Viceroys I
have ever seen in Ireland put together.
A month elapsed before Lord Temple answered this letter, unwilling to
trust his reply to the post, and waiting all that time for an
opportunity to send it by a "safe hand." His explanation of the delay
furnishes additional proof of the inquisition to which his
correspondence was exposed.
I should long since (he observes) have acknowledged your very
kind letter to me, if I had not delayed it partly with the
inclination of sending you an answer by a safe hand, and partly
from the exceeding anxious state of public business, which has
wholly engrossed my attention. It appears from your state[ment]
of the letters which you have received, that one, written about
the beginning of October, never reached you.
That Lord Temple's letters should have been secretly inspected by a
hostile Administration is intelligible, if we can admit such a
proceeding to be consistent with the honour of public men or
reconcilable with the obligations of the public service; but it is
impossible to comprehend upon what ground of expediency or from what
motives of jealousy or distrust, so flagrant a breach of confidence was
committed towards him by the subordinates (for it is difficult to
believe it could have been officially sanctioned by Ministers
themselves) of a Cabinet under which he held so responsible a situation
as that of the Vice-royalty of Ireland. The fact, nevertheless, admits
of no doubt, and throws a strong light on the sinister means which were
adopted in those days for the "management" of the executive.
The share which Lord Temple took in public affairs after his return from
Ireland, and during the existence of the Coalition, naturally enough
made him a special object of suspicion and resentment to the Cabinet. We
find him, in his letter to Mr. Cuff, stating that his attention has been
wholly engrossed by the anxious state of public business, and the
memoirs of the period show in the results how powerfully he contributed
to the overthrow of that ministerial combination, which he had denounced
as unnatural and infamous. But the details of his services to the King
throughout this harassing crisis have never found their way into
history; nor is it now possible, from their secret and confidential
nature, to trace them in full. The disclosures, however, which may be
gleaned from the few letters that passed to and from Lord Temple at this
period, sufficiently prove that the King trusted all along to his
counsel and support, and acted altogether on his advice. There was so
much hazard in committing opinions and suggestions to so unsafe a medium
as that of correspondence, that we can look but for scanty revelations
in the papers which have been preserved. It appears that Lord Temple
conducted his proceedings in reference to the struggle between the King
and his Ministers chiefly by means of personal interviews and detached
memoranda of his views, intended only to assist the memory in
conversation, and torn up as soon as used. Lord Thurlow was sometimes
employed by his Majesty as an agent on these occasions, and through him,
probably to avert suspicion from the real quarter on which his Majesty
relied, the intercourse with Lord Temple and his friends was
occasionally carried on.
From the commencement to the close of the brief tenure of the Coalition,
his Majesty held aloof from his Ministers; and it was not till the
opening of the Session, on the 11th of November, that an opportunity was
presented for acting effectively upon his determination to get rid of
them as soon as he could. During the interval that had elapsed since the
prorogation of Parliament in the preceding July, they prepared their
measures; but, from the want of co-operation and confidence on the part
of the Sovereign, the precise character of their policy was a matter of
speculation outside the Cabinet. His Majesty either did not, or would
not, know the course they intended to pursue; and it is evident, from
subsequent circumstances, that the plan of operations for relieving him
of their presence was kept in suspense, waiting upon events, up to the
moment when they brought forward their famous India Bill. The following
letter, written a few days before the opening of Parliament, shows how
little was known at that moment of the views of Ministers, and enables
us to perceive that, although Lord Temple was in frequent communication
with the King, he had not yet decided upon the line of conduct to be
adopted. The state of affairs implied in the letter is curious enough;
exhibiting the Sovereign, on the one side, taking secret counsel of the
Opposition, and the Ministry, on the other, coming down to Parliament
with measures which they were well aware His Majesty was eagerly
watching for a constitutional excuse to thwart and defeat.