Duke of Richard Plantagenet Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville Buckingham and Chandos

“ The general idea is that they mean to try a negotiation. But whether the Prince means that, and whether Pitt ought in any case to listen to it at all, or in what degree, are questions which it is difficult indeed to decide. There could never be a more favourable moment for Pitt's leaving the Government, with a view to his own credit and character. But then, on the other hand, his own personal situation must be so embarrassed: there is so much danger of an imputation of pride, and a factious desire of keeping alive differences, that my opinions fluctuate almost from hour to hour. ”

“ Before I proceed I wish to add, that although I have treated the vanity and personal arrogance of Lord Shelburne as it deserves, yet I will do him justice in acknowledging his merit, as one of the quickest and most indefatigable Ministers that this country ever saw. Many of his public measures were the result of a great and an informed mind, assisted by a firm and manly vigour. And I must ever think the Peace, attended with all its collateral considerations, the most meritorious and happiest event for a kingdom exhausted of men and of credit. ”

“ Suffer me then, Sire, to hope that my system and my conduct have not been unacceptable to you. Suffer me likewise to hope that your Majesty sees the reasons for this resignation, neither founded in personal motives of indolence, disinclination, or inattention to that service which is so truly flattering to me; nor in others more disgraceful, because they would be more prejudicial to your Government. And suffer me to hope that your Majesty sees me yielding to a necessity which I cannot avert, with a heart filled with the most lively emotions of gratitude, respect, and affection. ”

“ He answered, that the situation of Ireland weighed very materially with him in his wishes for peace, and that, although he never wished to shift off responsibility, yet he trusted in your integrity and honour; that, if he found it necessary, he should be enabled to state that part of the subject from the best authority. To this I thought myself justified in answering, that most certainly you would never abandon a ground which you had already stated to him, and which every hour made clearer to you; and that such a consideration certainly ought to weigh with Government in making the peace. ”

“ I have struggled to overcome my passion for my office [Pg 423] in Ireland; but I submit, because I am worn out, or rather am as near being worn out as, I think, a man who wishes to preserve a dignity of character should approach to. I have exceedingly wished to afford your Excellency every assistance in my power during your Administration; and if I retire from the Great Seal, I shall most certainly retain that wish, and display it by such proof as you can desire, and as I can with the warmest attachment afford you. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the whole, there is every appearance that the Declaratory Bill has occasioned a temporary division in the Cabinet, and a run against Dundas, and consequently against Pitt, who stands a willing sponsor for his transgressions, and who supports him through thick and thin. Dundas sticks to Pitt as a barnacle to an oyster-shell, so that if he chose it he cannot shake him off, and everybody believes he does not mean it, let what will be the consequence, because he likes him, and really wants him in the House of Commons ”

“ If I do not grossly flatter myself, I am capable of forming an opinion unbiassed by the considerations to which I allude; especially on points where my own honour, or that which I value as dearly as my own, is concerned. I have examined my own heart, and can say, with confidence, that it is not from personal motives that I speak, when I say that you lay upon these points a degree of weight far beyond what they deserve. If you were in a situation of inferiority or dependance, a watchful attention to everything of this sort would be necessary, and therefore commendable ”

“ I stand well, as I flatter myself, with the people of Ireland, to whom I have administered justice for more than twenty years, with both Houses of Parliament, and with the Bar of Ireland; with all of whom I have lived without a quarrel with any man, but I hope without forgetting what belonged to me to be mindful of. ”

“ I trust the eyes of the nation will soon be opened, as my sorrow may prove fatal to my health if I remain long in this thraldom. I trust you will be steady in your attachment to me, and ready to join other honest men in watching the conduct of this unnatural combination, and I hope many months will not elapse before the Grenvilles, the Pitts, and other men of abilities and character will relieve me from a situation that nothing could have compelled me to submit to, but the supposition that no other means remained of preventing the public finances from being materially affected. ”

“ In a week's time, there will not be in the Treasury a farthing of money to defray the ordinary and current expenses of the Government! Judge how this will operate upon the seamen and soldiers, who are daily expecting to be paid off, and who, God knows, do not seem to want so strong an inducement to mutiny as must be afforded them by the total want of money. The licentiousness of the people, already arrived at a pitch never known in this country, is daily inflamed by newspapers and pamphlets, while there is no Government whatever to restrain its effects. ”

“ I know that what I am going to say will seem to you extraordinary, and yet I must say it, because it is the real truth: I am still in the entire, firm, and thorough persuasion that there is not in Lord Sydney the remotest wish (as there cannot be the shadow of an interest) to do anything that can be personally offensive, or even disagreeable to you. Pitt, on whose sincerity I have ever found reason to rely, has assured me that he is in the same belief, and Fitzherbert entirely agrees with me. I am to see Pitt again in the course of to-day ”

“ I suppose there never was a situation in which any set of men ever had, at once, so many points to decide, so essentially affecting their own honour, character, and future situation, their duty to their country in a most critical situation, and their duty to their unhappy master, to whom they are unquestionably bound by ties of gratitude and honour, independent of considerations of public duty towards him. ”

“ If the King should remain in his present unhappy state of mind, and the Parliament be either dissolved, or expire by its natural death under the government of a Regent, I shall think myself, under those circumstances, bound, by my respect for the person who placed me at Windsor, to endeavour to preserve that seat for him; that he may find his own friends, where he was pleased to leave them, whenever he may happen to recover his reason. ”

“ George III.—whose admirable business habits and inflexible integrity inspired the highest deference and attachment amongst the personal friends he admitted to his confidence—was remarkable in no one particular more than in his jealousy of the prerogatives of the Crown. He carried his zeal in that matter so far as even to draw upon himself the charge of desiring to strain the rights of the Crown beyond constitutional limitations. ”

“ Judge, therefore, of the uneasiness of my mind, at having been thwarted in every attempt to keep the administration of public affairs out of the hands of the most unprincipled coalition the annals of this or any other nation can equal. I have withstood it till not a single man is willing to come to my assistance, and till the House of Commons has taken every step, but insisting on this faction being by name elected Ministers. ”

“ It was not till Lord North was called to the head of the Ministry, in 1770, that the public uneasiness was allayed, and a Cabinet of the King's own choice was founded in security. Lord North was an especial favourite with the King, whose extraordinary regard for him originated in the promptitude with which he responded to His Majesty's appeal, at a moment of serious embarrassment, when the Duke of Grafton unexpectedly threw up the Government, and Lord North consented to undertake it. "I love you as a man of worth, as I esteem you as a Minister," writes the King to him on one occasion ”

“ His Majesty desired nothing more than a list of the persons Lord Rockingham wished to propose for the Cabinet; but Lord Rockingham thought that something more was necessary to his own security and independence. He considered that when a statesman undertakes the duties of Administration, he assumes a responsibility irrespective of the Sovereign, and that his duty requires of him that he shall lay before His Majesty, in the first instance, as the basis of negotiation, an outline of the measures by which alone he can conduct the affairs of the kingdom with honour and success. ”

“ That it cannot be necessary to invest him with the whole regal authority, is, I think, quite evident; and we owe it to the King, both as public men professing allegiance to him, and as individuals bound to him by many ties of gratitude and honour, to take whatever steps we can with propriety to preserve to him, in case of his recovery, not merely his legal rights, of which he cannot be deprived, but also the political means of exercising those rights according to the opinions which he entertains both of public men and public measures. ”

“ Ireland holds out a career the most brilliant to my honest fame; but there [Pg 224] are feelings which I would not exchange in the present moment for all that the two kingdoms could bestow: to those feelings, whenever you are in public office, I recommend you; and trust me that they will amply repay you for any change which a resignation may make in your situation. To those scenes of domestic happiness which have hitherto blessed me, I shall with pleasure return; and in those scenes I shall look for your friendship with the same warm feelings with which I first embraced it ”

“ This language is the more extraordinary, because the opinion of the world in general, I might say of almost every man in London, is directly the reverse. Either, therefore, Lord Shelburne is (not a dissembler, but) the most abandoned and direct liar upon the face of the earth, or he is deceived himself, too grossly to be imagined, or the whole world besides is deceived. Which of these is the case, time will show, and that only; but I cannot bring myself to imagine that the first is. That he wishes you should believe him secure, I can easily imagine, and that he wishes it very strongly ”

“ Amongst the most urgent of them was the appointment of Fitzgibbon (afterwards Earl of Clare) to the Chancellorship of Ireland, which Lord Lifford was daily expected to resign.
Lord Lifford seems to have been a man of limited capacity and singular simplicity of character, formal and credulous, and tedious in his intercourse with the world. His letters to Lord Buckingham, written in a great clerkly hand, are full of solemn platitudes and ceremonious civilities; and whatever other excellent qualities he possessed, it cannot be inferred that he was a man of much mental reach or vigour. ”

“ But I am sure I know too well the situation of that country and of this, to think that it can now be held out without the most fatal consequences to both; and I think I know your feelings too well to imagine that you will suffer yourself to be made an instrument of deceiving any man or body of men whatever, still less a whole country, especially in contradiction to the language which you have invariably held, at least as far as I can recollect (ever since you accepted of your situation) , both to people in Ireland and to Government here, that the repeal was a complete renunciation. ”

“ The clandestine manner of carrying on a separate negotiation, which we complain of, would be equally practicable and equally blameable if Lord Fitzwilliam was Ambassador, as it is now that Mr. Grenville is Plenipotentiary. I must therefore again entreat you, as a matter of personal kindness to me, to remain a little longer at [Pg 42] Paris; if you were to leave it, all sorts of suspicions would be raised. It is of infinite consequence that we should have it to say that we have done all in our power to make peace, not only with regard to what may be expected from America, but from Europe. ”

“ The Portugal business is really all afloat; nor do Ministry see daylight; and I know, from undoubted authority, that France, Spain, and Portugal mean to offer their trade to Ireland upon lower terms, if you will dispense with the Alien Duty, or, in so many words, with the Navigation Act, which, entre nous, I fear is no longer binding upon you, as we have partially repealed it in favour of America, and therefore, under Yelverton's Bill, it is now void. This idea, I know, has been proposed to some of your Irish factors, and I have reason to believe that Government know nothing about it. ”

“ He resolved from the first to treat them as men who had violently broken into the Cabinet; and he called upon his friends to withhold their support from them, and to sustain him in his resistance to their policy. The ingratitude of Lord North touched him deeply; and in proportion as he shrank from all personal intercourse that could be avoided with the new allies of his former favourite, he turned for succour to men like Lord Temple, who preserved their honour unsullied, however their political views, on some subjects, might have differed from his own. ”

“ Is he to separate himself from people whom he has joined on the promise of mutual good faith and confidence, or is he to abandon the King in the very point to which he has pledged him, and on which he has always received from him a full and unequivocal support? ”

“ I must be lost to all feeling, if I did not take the warmest interest in the honour and prosperity of your Government, and if I did not acknowledge myself to be bound by the strongest ties of friendship and gratitude to contribute everything within my power to promote its strength, in any way in which you may please to call upon me. ”

“ Were I the Minister, I would give France an island or two to choose, if it would expose her selfishness, sooner than let her gain the esteem of the Americans by claiming anything essential for them in apparent preference to her own interest and ambition. All people, of all descriptions, in America, will read the treaty of peace, whenever it comes, which France shall make with this country ”

“ On this view of the question I have certainly formed my opinion, that the duty of Parliament is that which would be the duty of each individual sitting there, namely, to sacrifice objects of advantage to principles of justice. It is, however, a great question, and of no little embarrassment to Government, who run the risk of offending a numerous and powerful body of men. I am told that there is an idea of calling the county of Bucks together, to petition as other counties have done. ”