stations they fill-I have been obliged thus tediously to trespass on your patience, an apology for which can only be looked for and found in that friendship I before alluded to, and which has, for so many years past, taught us indulgence to each other.

Believe me, yours ever sincerely,

CARLISLE.

LORD FITZ GIBBON TO MR. BERESFORD.

Dublin, Saturday, 18th April, 1795.

MY DEAR BERESFORD,-My friends, who took Mr. Grattan's hint as to the necessity of removing me, were certainly within half an inch of performing the service so warmly recommended to them. If the stone which was aimed at my head, and which, by the mere weight of it, in grazing my forehead cut it to the bone, had struck me directly, it must have fractured my skull, though it had been solid as any in the noble house of Fitzgerald.

With respect to the step which I recommended to you to take, the only facts necessary to be stated on your part to Bearcroft will be, the length of time for which you have served the Crown, and the defamatory passage contained in Lord Fitzwilliam's letters. If he thinks fit to justify, he must plead the specific acts of malversation upon which he rests his charge against you. If he should plead not guilty generally, he cannot, on the trial of the action, enter into any justification of the charges.

The more I consider the subject, the more clearly it appears to me that you cannot pass by the atrocious calumnies, which he has published against you most certainly to gratify the spleen and malice of him and his friends and Ministers.

If Bearcroft should be of opinion that his publication is not actionable, I think that Auckland's idea is by no means a bad one-that you should write a letter to Lord Carlisle, for which you have abundant materials, with a request to him to publish it; and as in this instance he will probably decline your request, as I am told he declined Lord Fitzwilliam's, you may take the same course to make your correspondence public of which his Lordship has set you the example. Lord Dillon has closed his Committee, and the report is to be taken into consideration on Tuesday next. His idea seems to be to ratify everything which has been done, and to prevent the bargain from being further executed by the Commissioners. Most certainly abundant evidence is reported to justify the Commissioners in what they did. If the covenant is not such a contract as they were warranted by the Act of Parliament to make, the Attorney-General, under whose opinion they acted, is to answer that objection. I am confident that nothing unpleasant with respect to the Commissioners is meant by Dillon, or will pass in our House on Tuesday. This country is not in rebellion, notwithstanding the seasonable, manly, and constitutional efforts of Lord Fitzwilliam and his Ministers to rouse the people to a just sense of their rights and his wrongs. The Seceders, as he calls them, or in plain English the rational and

respectable Catholics, are now extremely anxious that Mr. Grattan should desist; but in this he will no doubt judge for them, and proceed to emancipate them whether they wish it or not.

Yours always truly,

My dear Beresford,

FITZ GIBBON.

MR. BERESFORD TO LORD CARLISLE.

Bath, 27th April, 1795. }

MY DEAR LORD,-I had the honour of your Lordship's letter, enclosing a copy of that which you wrote to Lord Fitzwilliam on the 17th of April, in answer to those very extraordinary letters which his Lordship had addressed to you.

Your Lordship will give me leave, in the first place, to return you my sincere thanks for your obliging communication; and further, to assure you that I feel the highest satisfaction in finding that I continue to hold a place in your Lordship's esteem, an honour I have ever been proud of, and which I trust I never shall forfeit by any improper conduct of mine.

The unwarrantable attacks and insinuations against me contained in Lord Fitzwilliam's letters might have raised my indignation or affected my feelings had I not, in the first place, been perfectly conscious of my own innocence, and in the next, been very certain that insinuations of such a nature, coming from a man totally

unacquainted with me and my character, and taking his impressions from others without caution or reserve, could never have weight in the scale of public opinion against the evidence of those noblemen and gentlemen under whose Administrations I have had the honour of serving Government for twenty-seven years, many of whom have had long and intimate acquaintance with me, both in public and in private life, and upon whose justice and friendship I find I did not in vain rely when I assured myself that they would not omit an opportunity of stating my real character and conduct; and I have remained the more easy in my mind from a certainty that such an opportunity could not be wanting in the investigations that were to be expected in Parliament.

Whatever might have been my sentiments upon the first reading of his Lordship's letters, upon a cool and deliberate review of them I thought that, where it was evident to the meanest capacity who read them that the impression of my character was taken by his Lordship on this side of the water, and not from inquiries made from those persons who had been in the Government of Ireland, and who could have given him the surest information, that he carried his prejudices over with him to Ireland, and acted upon them within forty-eight hours after his arrival, without further inquiry or investigation, endeavouring with all his power to remove me from office, and having failed in the attempt, that his letters to your Lordship, so far as they relate to me, were dictated by passion in the hour of disappointment,-I thought, I say, that they were unworthy of my notice; that they were calculated, not to expose me, but their

author, and ought to be treated by me with silent contempt.

I shall not attempt to trouble your Lordship with a vindication of myself, or a refutation of the vague and general charges made against me; let the inquiry into the management of the Revenue, set on foot in the Irish House of Commons, acquit or condemn me. I shall not presume to anticipate their judgment.

I have the honour to be, my dear Lord, with great truth and regard, your much obliged and very faithful, humble servant,

J. BERESFORD.

LORD TOWNSHEND TO MR. BERESFORD.

Weymouth Street, 29th April, 1795.

MY DEAR SIR,-I have just received your letter, enclosing yours to Lord Carlisle. Nothing could be more proper, and I must add, dignified, as your conduct to Government in office at all periods so perfectly corresponds with it.

Lord Fitzwilliam seems to have been imposed upon from the beginning by his new allies, and with all the efforts of Opposition here to co-operate with that in Ireland will, I hope, be defeated.

You shall hear from me when the Exhibition to-morrow is over. I am happy to hear that the prejudices in Ireland so much subside; that Jackson is condemned and more so, that the evidence leads to further good consequences to the detection of a correspondence with