question then will be, whether Government or Opposition will think it advisable to press this subject, with the certainty, however, that in proportion as the former appear to shrink from it, the latter will press it.

I trust that a short residence at Bath will re-establish Mrs. Beresford; and I am happy that by chance she has escaped a scene which would have hurried her so much. I have now no doubt that everything will be quiet in Dublin in a short time; though I think it probable that the mob may be again misled to riot whenever Parliament rejects or postpones the Bill for realising the full extent of the Catholic expectations."

I am, dear Sir, always, and with the truest regards, your very faithful and obedient servant,

NUGENT BUCKINGHAM.

LORD CARLISLE TO MR. BERESFORD.

Grosvenor Place, 17th April, 1795.

DEAR SIR, The enclosed letter to Lord Fitzwilliam, which terminated our correspondence upon public business, will sufficiently explain my motives for writing it, as well as those which incline me to make a communication of it to you. After what has passed in regard to other letters concerning the unfortunate turn things took during his Government, I have been obliged to put the enclosed into too many hands to retain the wish

that it may be considered of a secret or confidential nature.

I am, dear Sir, with great esteem, yours most sincerely,

CARLISLE.

(Enclosed.)

LORD CARLISLE TO LORD FITZWILLIAM.

April 17th, 1795.

DEAR FITZWILLIAM,—A friendship which commenced in the earliest period of youth, and which I trust will only cease with the termination of life, would readily supply sufficient excuse for heavier difficulties than those imposed upon me in consequence of the two letters addressed to me, in answer to mine of the 21st of February, finding their way to the inspection of the public.

It is not easy for me to guess what idea the public may have formed of a letter which has produced such copious answers from you, and seemed to force you to a justification beyond the limits of a secret and confidential correspondence.

In turning to that letter, I think you will perceive nothing, besides my zeal for your welfare and interest, which could have prompted me to the communication and disclosure of such opinions on the opening of your Administration, as I was enabled to gather, and to which (however erroneously or correctly conceived) it appeared to me that you ought not to have remained a stranger. If my poor sentiments could have been collected by

you at the dawn of your Administration, and which it was not my intention to obtrude upon you, they could only be discovered in my fears that you had adopted a system difficult to recede from or abandon before you had been long enough near the source of real information confidently to take by your own scale the just measure of its size and magnitude. God knows, I never meant (though writing hastily I might express myself inaccurately) to pronounce with arrogance on the great measures themselves then in your contemplation to advance, but with diffidence left the conception and consideration of their probable effects to the judgment of your near political connections, capacitated by their situations and knowledge to trace and pursue their tendencies and bearings, and who, report did not scruple to assert, were both surprised and alarmed at the rapidity with which these great objects were approached.

I stated to you that a general belief prevailed, that in your final arrangements and concluding conversation with His Majesty's Ministers, at which others assisted, it was settled that no material measures either as to persons or things, was to be decided upon without further communication and concurrence with the Cabinet of England. I might have added that this the more easily obtained in the world, from the obvious necessity that the most perfect and harmonious understanding should prevail between the Governments of both countries as to their system of rule, an understanding always necessary, but more particularly so at this moment, when both have objects of such importance and joint interest before

them as demand a suspension at least of everything not intrinsically connected with them.

As to the sudden dismission of certain individuals, who had not had the opportunity, if you could suppose they had the will, to offend against your Administration, I certainly had not the same anxiety to keep back my sentiments upon that step. Justice to some of those persons who during my Government served the public with fidelity, honesty, and ability (I mean Mr. Beresford, &c., &c.), demanded of me a less cautious mode of expression; and in truth your subsequent reasoning upon those dismissions calls upon me to say a word or two upon this subject.

Of the alarming power to Government of the Beresford family or followers, I pretend not to form a comprehension; nor can I conceive how any Lord-Lieutenant, standing upon your high ground, challenging the public confidence by the undisguised fairness of your good intentions, could ever be destitute of the means to crush any power (but particularly that which derived the essence of its strength from office) whenever such power presumed to stir a hair-breadth in an attempt to molest the Government of the kingdom in that road in which, for the public interest, it thought fit to travel. But till that vain and mischievous disposition should have manifested itself, I clearly leaned to the opinion that the hand of superior strength ought not to be stretched out against it.

You say to me, in regard to some others, "You left them clerks, I found them ministers." When and how

this metamorphosis happened, I am unable to conjecture. That I left them most usefully employed for the ease of their principal, and for the quick despatch of business, is unquestionably true. With long habits of intercourse with men, both in high and in subordinate official situations, for unsuspected integrity and secrecy, for mildness and conciliating manners, for the most perfect arrangement and method in conducting the business of his office, I can fairly say that I never witnessed the equal of Mr. Sackville Hamilton. Mr. Cooke was, in my time, young, but quick, diligent, and very promising as a useful person in the station he then filled.

Respecting others with whom I never had any connection, and who were to remove from the elevated situations of their profession, you call upon me to admit the propriety of such removals on the foot of having from necessity a splendid parliamentary debater annexed to the condition of a great law servant of the Crown. Indeed, my dear Fitzwilliam, I subscribe to no such opinion; and, in vindication of a very opposite one, refer you to the example of many men on this side the water, whose acknowledged abilities and learning would have been lost to the State had they been driven from their situations because they made not the same brilliant figure in the senate which they had done at the bar.

I have dwelt the longer upon this part of the subject to show you how fairly a different opinion may be opposed to yours, and that such may be conscientiously entertained without any design to wound your feelings or injure your reputation. In Mr. Pitt's endeavour to hold up a shield for the shelter of persons who had

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