Volume I Part 23 (2/2)

It is with much concern I find that your Excellency has not been prevailed upon to continue in the execution of a Government which all accounts agree, and universal opinion confirms, your Excellency to have conducted with so much credit to yourself and satisfaction to the country over which you have the honour to preside. I could have hoped, that the many honourable testimonies of regard given to you might have produced other sentiments, and that the general wishes of the country might have effected what the Administration here might have attempted in vain. This, however, not having been the case, I have it to notify to your Excellency, that the pressing instances of my friends have been able to overcome my own apprehensions, and I have consented to accept the arduous situation of becoming your Excellency's successor.

I have had the honour of being declared this day, by His Majesty in Council, as the person to relieve your Excellency, which, as I understand your wishes to be, that it should be as soon as can be, with any tolerable convenience to the affairs at home, and the settlement of my establishment in Ireland, I shall forward as much as possible. I hope, therefore, to be able to set off from here in a month from the day of my declaration, at furthest, by a week after, which I understand will be about the time you find necessary for the arrangement of your affairs, and the soonest you would have been able to have gone from hence.

I had the pleasure of a conversation the other day with Mr.

Grenville, who very politely acquainted me with your Lords.h.i.+p's sentiments, and readiness to give every communication which might be of service to a successor. These a.s.surances I was happy to receive, although I could entertain little doubt that a man of your Lords.h.i.+p's honour and liberality of mind would feel a pleasure and satisfaction in doing that which others, not with the same liberality of sentiment, might consider only as a duty upon them. I shall think myself much obliged, and shall derive no small a.s.sistance from a communication of your Lords.h.i.+p's active exertions and inquiries since you have been in Ireland; and I make no doubt I shall find many plans which it will be much for the interest of Ireland for me to adopt and carry into execution.

I have the honour to be, with great truth,

My dear Lord, Your most obedient humble servant, Northington.

Amongst the papers in Lord Temple's hand-writing, is the rough draft of a letter to Lord North, dated May 2nd, complaining that he had received no answer to his despatch of April 24th, although a messenger had just arrived, bearing His Majesty's commands on the subject of the Parliament. The terms of this letter show how deeply he felt the neglect of the Administration, in reference to the public interests involved in his resignation.

LORD TEMPLE TO LORD NORTH.

Dublin Castle, May 2nd, 1783.

My Lord,

The messenger who is this moment arrived with His Majesty's commands upon the subject of the Parliament, has not brought me one syllable in answer to my despatch of the 24th, so interesting to my feelings. Your Lords.h.i.+p, I am certain, does not propose to delay receiving His Majesty's commands upon the many matters contained in it, and yet your total silence upon it, and the very distant day to which the Parliament is prorogued (for which measure the King's servants alone are responsible), do not hold out to me that prospect of release, which I still conceive, from every principle of public duty to this kingdom, and from every personal consideration to me, will not be delayed many days longer. I have sufficiently pressed upon your Lords.h.i.+p's attention these reasons of my conduct. I have only to add, that I have well considered the alternative to which I may be driven, and must again remind your Lords.h.i.+p, that in no contingency do I consider myself responsible for any one of the consequences which may be the result of the public inattention to this Government, under which this high and important office has been left unfilled from the formation of the new Government till the 24th ult., and under which the same interregnum is, in your Lords.h.i.+p's despatch of that date, held out for six weeks longer.

And I am the more particularly anxious for this answer, from the heartfelt concern with which I wait for the notification of His Majesty's sense of those a.s.surances of attachment and dutiful respect, which makes me solicitous that no part of my conduct may be liable to misconstruction: to his wisdom I submit those considerations, which touch so nearly the interests of this kingdom, and to his justice, with all humility, those which are personal to myself.

I have the honour to be, N. T.

While this letter was on its way to London, it was crossed by Lord North's answer to the despatch of the 24th, containing, in detail, the defence of the Government on the numerous points pressed upon their attention by the Lord-Lieutenant.

LORD NORTH TO LORD TEMPLE.

Whitehall, May 5th, 1733.

My Lord,

The anxiety which your Excellency felt in writing your letter of the 24th of last month, cannot, I will venture to affirm, possibly exceed my surprise at receiving it. Having, during the very little time that I have been in office, made it my object to return the most speedy answers to all your Excellency's letters, and having had the good fortune in every instance to convey the most favourable return all to your Excellency's wishes and commands, you may well suppose that I must have been much struck at reading your complaints of ill-treatment, indelicacy, or something (whatever it may be) that deserves a harsher name. If, in the course of my life, it had not been frequently my lot to see very great offence taken upon very slight causes, the terms of your Excellency's letter would have given me more uneasiness. But, upon a calm and dispa.s.sionate review of your complaints, and of the conduct of His Majesty's servants, I can, by no means, either in their name, or in my own, plead guilty to the neglects and other misbehaviour which your Excellency thinks proper to lay to our charge.

Your Excellency is of opinion, that His Majesty's servants should have employed themselves in endeavouring to find a successor to your Excellency from the receipt of your letter of the 12th of March. If your Excellency will give yourself the trouble to recollect the transactions of that period, you will, I am sure, concur with me in opinion, that it would have been the extreme of folly and presumption for any of His Majesty's present servants to have treated upon this subject with any person breathing before the 2nd of April, when they had the honour of kissing His Majesty's hand. Long after the day of the receipt of your Excellency's letter, it was perfectly uncertain here, to whose hands His Majesty would commit the management of his affairs; nay, your Excellency cannot be ignorant, that, since that time, the expectations (and I doubt not the hopes) of the public were fixed upon seeing your Excellency at the head of the Administration.

The 2nd of April was, therefore, the first moment that any of His Majesty's present servants could take any step towards the nomination of a new Chief Governor of Ireland. From that time measures for that purpose have been constantly pursued, till the affair was finally settled, on the 24th of last month. The various impediments which have arisen I need not mention to your Excellency, but the fact is exactly as I have stated; and, as the delay is not unprecedented, nor even very long, I think it is not trespa.s.sing too much upon your Excellency's candour to expect that you will believe my a.s.sertion.

In your last letter, your Excellency seems hurt, that the London newspapers should have announced in Dublin the appointment of the Earl of Northington two days before you received my letter.

Whatever might have been the information or the conjectures of the news-writers, I a.s.sure your Excellency that I wrote within an hour after I received authentic information of that appointment.

As to the total and absolute neglect of Irish considerations, on which your Excellency expresses yourself so strongly, you certainly cannot mean to allude to the ordinary and current business (which has been regularly attended to, and has met with the most speedy decision that each case would admit of), but to some great commercial points, upon which your Excellency had written at different times to the late Administration, and which had not, as I collect from your Excellency's letter, been considered, when they quitted His Majesty's service.

I well remember, that Lord Carlisle very fully and clearly stated, very earnestly and repeatedly pressed, the demands of Ireland, with respect to the refusal of Portugal to admit their woollen goods. Lord Hillsborough, then Secretary of State, urged the claim of Ireland with much zeal and perseverance in his despatches to the Court of Portugal, and in his conferences with the Portuguese Minister in London. What was done in that business by the late Administration I know not: nothing of that sort has yet come to my knowledge; but, during the few days that we have been in office, the Secretary of State for the Foreign Department has renewed this negotiation with Monsieur de Pinto, and I doubt not but it will be pursued with all the attention that so important a question deserves. But it is singular, that His Majesty's present servants should be criminated for not having finished in the first busy three weeks of a new Administration what has been depending during the two last Ministries, and, notwithstanding the efforts of one of them at least, is by no means so far advanced as to promise an immediate conclusion.

<script>