It has occurred, that adopting the measure generally, the application of it to your particular regiment might be avoided, by permitting you to form a separate light infantry battalion, under the command of Fremantle, he being an army officer, and one whom the Duke of York himself allows to be as fit for that purpose as any he could select; and that this permission may, under certain circumstances and conditions, be extended to other colonels desirous of taking that mode preferably to the other.
But this is not without its difficulty, nor is it possible for any man, beforehand, to engage for the Duke of York's consent to a measure, on which he has so much right not only to have voix au chapitre but to have a voice nearly decisive, so long as his regulations do not interfere with the law. All, therefore, that I can say is, that I am persuaded Dundas will do whatever he can to promote this arrangement, the only solution that I see to difficulties, one side of which, in the alternative stated by you, present consequences to which I am very sure, whatever else happens, you will never bring yourself to look. If I had the least doubt upon that point, I certainly could and should say much of the time, of the situation of the country, of the local position of your regiment in its present quarters, and of the possibility of any man, under such circumstances, resigning a command because he disapproves in his own judgment, even supposing him right in that judgment, of a military order which the Commander-in-chief has clearly a right to give, and for the omission, as well as the giving of which, he and the Government are exclusively responsible.
I know nothing more of the supplementary Militia than that they are to be immediately called out.
LORD GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Dropmore, May 1st, 1798.
My dearest Brother,
I got your letter here last night. I should not have gone out of town even for one day, if I had not understood from Dundas that the Duke of York, though quite determined against adopting the substitution you propose, seemed to think that in order to avoid putting you under difficulties of any sort, he could forbear to make the demand on your regiment.
I do not say that I like this expedient, but I see no other without his abandoning a measure which, for one, I should be very sorry to see abandoned, believing, as I do, that things of much more importance than the matter of any legal question of a Militia Act, depend upon it. I really believe that you are not accurately informed when you speak of the wishes of the Militia in general being against this measure. But on this point you have certainly better means of knowing individual opinions than I can have. On the legal point, the opinion of the King's law servants must of course be the only guide for a Commander-in-chief, even if he were not a Prince of the blood, but much more when he is so, and consequently not supposed to enter into discussions of that sort, or to be responsible for them.
I grieve that in these times you should set the example of raising these questions; but I am confident you would not do so if you did not think it right. I own I should have thought that any idea of disobeying, as a Militia officer, a command of the Commander-in-chief, was out of the question in the present moment, and that if the case (I had almost said) which you yourself put, had occurred, that of being ordered to embark on board Lord Bridport's fleet, you would have done so, with a protest of ne trahatur in exemplum.
Dundas will, as I understand from him, explain to you what he considers to be the case about your letter, which he states to me to have been an official letter addressed, I think, to P. W. Howe or his Adjutant-General, and which therefore he did not consider in any other light than as an accurate statement of the doubt given in officially and meant to be so considered. But all this is of very little consequence in comparison of that of the light in which the thing itself places you, if it were possible that you could adopt the resolution you speak of.
I take it for granted that Dundas's Bill is meant only to extend to British subjects, or may easily be so limited. As such, it is surely highly advantageous in the present moment to have the services of the men who, of all British officers, have seen the most real service.