Part 50 (1/2)

Stocks are down to 73-1/2, but we have nothing new either from Paris or Madrid.

Ever yours affectionately,

C. W. W.

THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES W. WYNN TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

East India Office, Feb. 13, 1823.

MY DEAR B----,

We are, I believe, going to augment our estimates from 21,000 to 25,000 seamen, which it is thought will be sufficient to protect our neutrality in the contest which now seems all but certain.

I am glad to say that the increase of the number of judges is consented to, and the measures of a third a.s.size, the alteration of the Welsh Judicature, and the appointment of a Committee of Lords, with certain judges as a.s.sessors, are to be consequent upon it.

We are also to increase the efficiency of secondary punishments by sending convicts to different parts of our colonies, there to be employed in hard-labour; the worst to Sierra Leone; and to diminish the number of offences liable to capital punishment.

I expect Plunket every hour. He sailed from Dublin on Monday night, and I should think ought at latest to have been in town to-day. The remarks mentioned in my last have been general enough to have produced much observation, and they are, I am told, attributed rather to disinclination to the _master_ than the man.

THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES W. WYNN TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

East India Office, Feb. 15, 1823.

MY DEAR B----,

No one who does not reside the greatest part of his time in London, can possess real influence in public affairs. Lord Chatham at Hayes, and Lord Grenville at Dropmore, neither of them half your distance, are instances of the loss of political consequence at a time when from the extreme multiplication of correspondence, Parliamentary inquiries, &c., every single department was not over-worked and over-occupied to the degree they now are. There really now is no time even for communication among the different members of the Government, each member of which manages his own department almost without interference from his colleagues, except when he thinks it necessary to call a Cabinet on any point of peculiar importance.

Plunket arrived yesterday evening, and I have had a long conversation with him to-day. He is hara.s.sed and fatigued to a great degree by all he has lately been going through. The dismissals of Sir C. Vernon, St. George, and Stanhope, have taken place since he left Dublin, he having dissuaded Lord W----y strongly from the removal of the former before he went, and as he thought with success, he being just the good-natured, silly animal whom everybody would compa.s.sionate, and the women in particular.

The particular offence is their presence at the Beef-steak Club, where the _Chancellor and Commander-in-Chief_ also dined, when the Lord-Lieutenant was drunk to the tune of ”Now Phoebus sinketh in the west,” with dead silence, and Lord Talbot with great applause; and afterwards the toast, which you will read in the _Courier_.

Now really, as the Dublin paper observes, for poor Charley Vernon to have got up, and in the presence of the Chancellor and Lord Combermere to have objected to the toast which they joined in because the Lord-Lieutenant was clearly the person who wished to ”_subvert the const.i.tution_,” would have been rather a strong measure; and it seems pitiful to resent conduct in the Chamberlain, because he was part of his household, which the Lord-Lieutenant dare not notice in the Chancellor.

He [Plunket] has seen Liverpool, who, as is usual with him, dealt in generals, and avoided any particular conversation on the late events.

It seems to me that the proposition for extending the Act against secret and affiliated societies to Ireland (which has not yet been decided upon by the Cabinet) will probably bring the matter to an upshot. If that is agreed to, it will be evident that the Government are determined to support Lord Wellesley, and if not, that they are willing to resign Ireland to the tyranny of the lodges.

Plunket describes the flame in Dublin as beyond description, and regretted Wellesley being surrounded by a set of people totally incapable of a.s.sisting or advising him, and who merely carry rumours to irritate him.

I have no time to write more.

Ever affectionately yours,

C. W. W.

The Duke of Buckingham having accepted a proposal made to him to preside at the anniversary meeting on St. Patrick's day, wrote to the Duke of Clarence to obtain for the festival the advantage of his Royal Highness's presence, who thus replied:--