House of Commons, Six p.m.
My dear B——,
Lord Liverpool had not, at eleven this morning, returned from Brighton, and Londonderry was not out of bed, or at least not come down. I sent your two notes to the latter, but have not yet seen him, though the post is just going out.
The visit to Brighton relates, I believe, wholly to the Civil List, on which the country gentlemen are to make their next serious attack. I do not agree with you in your wish that the Government should break up upon so very unpopular a question as that of the Admiralty. I myself look at the minority on the salt tax with more apprehension and concern than the majority on the Admiralty.
Ever yours,
C. W. W.
THE RIGHT HON. THOS. GRENVILLE TO THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.
March 4, 1822.
My dear Duke,
The country gentlemen have so much deserted the Ministers in the Admiralty questions, that it is not a propitious moment to ask favours, while so much ill-humour mutually prevails. A great many of these country gentlemen being sulky and discontented because the price of corn will not sustain the rise they had made in their rents, vent their spleen by opposing and thwarting the Government; and some who were steady anti-reformers have suffered themselves to be gulled by Cobbett into attributing the pressure of their rents to an inadequate representation in Parliament, though it has no more to do with their rents than with those of the Cham of Tartary. Yet these blockheads all profess that they do not wish to change the Government, though they are doing all that they can to annihilate them. The danger is a pretty serious one, for, with the connexion that Opposition holds with the Radicals, and the daily pledges they give to the tenets of these people, it is probable that the extensive changes that would immediately take place, would have very much the effect of an entire revolution in the government of the country. At sixty-seven this is less interesting to me than it is to you and to your son, for whose sake I heartily wish I may see this with exaggerated alarm.