St. James's Street, Feb. 4th, 1785.
My dear Brother,
Anything that comes from you with the least prospect of bringing
back to me those sentiments of affection which, in spite of any
political differences, it has always been my first wish to keep
alive between us; any intimation of your looking for a brother
in one who has never ceased to be so to you; I cannot but be
eager to express the pleasure and satisfaction I feel in
receiving from you. And if I did not feel shocked and wounded by
those expressions which ascribe to my vote motives so foreign to
my nature, that I can scarce bear to read or repeat them, my
hopes of living with you in the affectionate intercourse of a
brother would have kept my attention to that pleasing prospect
only, and would have shut my lips upon every past subject of
difference. Can I really have to think that you are serious in
considering me as having struck at your honour and your life by
any vote that I have given? That such an expression can have
come from you after a year's reflection, wounds me more than
anything that could be said in the first moments of anger; and
it is not against such a charge that I can argue to defend
myself.
I cannot say with how much concern it is, that I have felt
myself obliged to allude to anything that has passed, nor could
I have been forced now to do it, was it not that to have said
nothing upon a charge so cruel might have looked like
acquiescing in the justice of it: of that vote I have always
said, and God knows, always truly said, that I made in it no
personal attack, felt in it nothing hostile to you, and
regretted in it only the misrepresentation and misconception of
others. I have said more, and still say, that the
misunderstanding of that vote is so grievous to me, that,
blameless as my motives were, I would not have given it, if I
had thought it liable to the misrepresentations that have been
made of it; yet, God knows, I thought it could be mistaken only
by those who did not know me.
I return with pleasure, my dear brother, to that part of your
note, in which I hope I find again the prospect of that near
affectionate relation, the renewal of which on your part, my
mind has ever been anxious for, and ever eager to bring about,
from the first moment that political differences had separated
us; for, upon political subjects, my mind receives no impression
that can stop in it the feelings of relationship, kindness, and
affection, all of which I will hope, my dearest brother, the
latter words of your note again open the way to--a way in which
I cannot too often repeat, how gladly and happily I should go
forward in.
Ever your very affectionate brother,
Thomas Grenville.
The following passage, in the Marquis of Buckingham's hand-writing,
apparently cut out of a former letter to which the above is the reply,
seems to contain the observations from which Mr. Thomas Grenville
extracted the hope of reconciliation. It is enclosed in his letter as if
it had been returned to the writer.
When you joined in the vote which impeached my honour, and
possibly my life, you forgot the feelings of a brother, and
dissolved the ties between us. I loathe the looking back, still
less do I mean to reproach: my heart is still alive to those
feelings which nature and religion dictate to me.
I have no false pride, and, therefore, have no conditions to
propose to you. All that I look for is a _brother_; but in that
word I comprehend all the sentiments of affection which I feel I
discharged faithfully towards you till the moment of our
separation. Consult your feelings, and God direct them.
In the next letter, Mr. W. W. Grenville communicates a scrap of
political gossip to his brother.