We have had a full talk with Charles, and have laid before him the good and the bad, as far as I can judge of it. His decision and yours (not ours) must ultimately regulate your conduct.
I have strongly recommended to him to see Lord Liverpool and Lord Londonderry, and also Lord Wellesley, who has written to me in very kind terms to announce his appointment, and to whom I write to offer to go to Richmond to see him, if it is inconvenient to him to come here. I hope you and Charles will endeavour to learn from him the plain English of this metaphor about balances, and what it is that he understands himself to be sent to Ireland to do.
It is a bad feature of this business, that every day presents some new difficulty not previously announced to you.
The Courier now informs us,—1, That Lord Sidmouth is to continue of the Cabinet; and 2, That Canning is not to go to India; or, in other words, that Charles is to go alone into the Cabinet at the very moment that is studiously chosen for making it more orange in its complexion than it was before; and secondly, that what is called strengthening Government in the House of Commons consists in driving Canning into opposition, who was before the best speaker on the Government side, and having Peel in Government, who was before a speaker also on their side.
I wish I could say I approved all these things, because I see you wish it; but I must speak the truth or hold my tongue, and my affection to you both makes me very reluctant to do the latter, though for your sake I have certainly expressed myself much less strongly to Charles on some of these points than I should otherwise have done.
As for saying of each of these things separately, that there are personal objections to A—— and B—— and C——, and that they are each and all of them individuals of too little consequence for you to hang your decisions upon, of what does a discussion of this nature consist, except first, of measures, the explanation of the most important of which is now wrapped up in metaphorical ambiguity; and secondly, of the men who are to execute them; and if these really are severally as insignificant as you deem them, what better argument can be found against putting them or keeping them in the first ranks of a new arrangement, the professed object of which is to supply strength which was confessed to be wanting?
But I have done, and have only as before most earnestly to wish that you may do what is best, whether I am able ultimately to think it so or not.
LORD GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Dropmore, Dec. 5, 1821.
I return you Wellesley's letter, with which I am much pleased. I wish I could say the same of the other parts of the business; but I am old-fashioned enough to be thoroughly scandalized at the want of the common forms of civility and respect so singularly shown in Lord L——'s sending up for Charles from Wales to receive a proposal of coming into the Cabinet, and in the interim taking himself off to Bath, and leaving behind him not even a letter, but a message that he is not to be back till near the meeting of Parliament.