No. III.

Note from Mr. Canning to Lord Wellesley, enclosing a Letter to Mr. Canning from Lord Liverpool, relative to Lord Castlereagh.

(COPY.)

"Gloucester Lodge, Sunday night, "May 17, 1812.

"MY DEAR WELLESLEY,

"I have just received from Lord Liverpool a letter, of which the enclosed is a copy. I transmit it to you to be added, according to his desire, to the copy of the minute of his verbal communication of this morning.

“Ever affectionately your's,

"G. C.”

COPY in No. III.

Lord Liverpool to Mr. Canning.

(PRIVATE.)TM

"Fife-House, May 17, 1812.

66 MY DEAR CANNING,

"I think, upon reflection, it is due to Lord Castlereagh to state, in writing, what I mentioned to you verbally, that from motives of delicacy he absented himself from the Cabinet, on the oc

casions on which the subject in your Memorandum was determined.

"I did not, however, make the communication to you, without having reason to know that he would be no obstacle in the way of an arrangement, founded on the principles stated in the Memorandum..

"I will beg of you to communicate this letter to any persons to whom you may communicate the Memorandum.

"(Signed)

LIVERPOOL."

"To the Right Hon. George Canning."

Paper relative to Lord Liverpool's Proposal to Mr. Canning, May 17, 1812.

"Gloucester Lodge, May 18, 1812.

66 MY DEAR LIVERPOOL,

"I have communicated to such of my friends as I had an immediate opportunity of consulting, the minute, taken in your presence, of the proposition which you conveyed to me yesterday.

"In a case in which I felt that my decision either way might be liable to misapprehension, I was desirous rather to collect the opinions of persons whose judgment I esteem, than to act on the impulse of my own first feelings.

"The result of their opinions is, that by entering into the Administration upon the terms proposed to me, I should incur such a loss of personal and public character, as would disappoint the object which his Royal Highness the Prince Regent has at heart; and must render my accession to his Government a new source of weakness, rather than an addition of strength.

"To become a part of your Administration, with the previous knowledge of your unaltered opinions as to policy of resisting all consideration of the state of the laws affecting his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects, would, it is felt, be to lend myself to the defeating of my own declared opinions on that most important question: opinions which are as far as those of any man from being favourable to precipitate and unqualified concession; but which rest on the conviction that it is the duty of the advisers of the crown, with a view to the peace, tranquillity, and strength of the empire, to take that whole question into their early and serious consideration; and earnestly to endeavour to bring it to a final and satisfactory settlement.

"With this result of the opinions of those whom I have consulted my own entirely concurs; and such being the ground of my decision, it is wholly unnecessary to advert to any topics of inferior importance.

"After the expressions, however, with which

you were charged on the part of all your colleagues, I should not be warranted in omitting to declare, that no objection of a personal sort should have prevented me from uniting with any or all of them, in the public service, if I could have done so with honour; and if, in my judgment, a Cabinet so constituted in all its parts, could have afforded to the country, under its present great and various difficulties, an adequately efficient Administration.

"I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of adding, that the manner of your communication with me has entirely corresponded with the habits and sentiments of a friendship of so many years; a friendship which our general concurrence on many great political principles has strengthened, and which our occasional differences have in no degree impaired.

+

"On the public grounds which I have stated, I must entreat you to lay at the feet of the Prince Regent, together with the warmest expressions of my dutiful attachment to his Royal Highness, and of my acknowledgement for the favourable opinion which his Royal Highness has been graciously pleased to entertain of me, my humble but earnest prayer to be excused from accepting office on terms which, by a sacrifice of public character, must render me inefficient for the service of his Royal Highness's Government.

"I presume, at the same time, humbly to solicit

an audience of the Prince Regent, for the purpose of explaining in person to his Royal Highness the grounds of my conduct, on an occasion on which I should be grieved to think, that his Royal Highness could, for a moment, consider me as wanting either in duty to his Royal Highness, or in zeal for the public service; and of assuring his Royal Highness that my inability to assist in forwarding his Royal Highness's purpose of procuring strength to his Administration, on the plan which has been suggested by his Royal Highness's confidential servants, does not arise from any disposition, on my part, to shrink from the encounter of those difficulties which press, at this time, upon the country and upon the Crown. "I am &c.

(Signed)

GEORGE CANNING.”

No. IV.

Copy of a Letter from Marquis Wellesley to the Earl ̧ of Liverpool, transmitting Lord W.'s Reply to Lord Liverpool's Proposal.

"Apsley-House, May 18, 1812, half-past three, p. m.

MY DEAR LORD,

"I enclose a paper, containing my reply to the communication which you were so kind as to