LORD GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Dropmore, 12 at night, June 11.
We have both talked this thing over as fully as our materials enabled us to do, and it is our decided opinion that the King has, and can have in the present moment, only the alternative of putting himself fairly and fully into the hands of one or other of the two great parties; and that it would be deceiving him, and trifling with a most awful state of things, if anybody undertook to be useful to him on any other footing, or even gave rise to the delay of an hour in deciding on that alternative by countenancing hopes of any third arrangement.
The House of Commons is totally unmanageable in any such view. The whole weight of the Ministers there, combining their aid as they now do, is, as you see, hardly sufficient to carry on the ordinary public business from day to day. I very much question whether all the weight that the Opposition could unite for the same purpose, if the task were committed into their hands, would be much, if at all, more adequate to it. What hopes, then, could a third party entertain of doing this in opposition to both?
I can easily see in what course your assistance and support might be very useful indeed to strengthen his Government, into whatever hands he may finally determine to commit it; and in the present state of things I should, as far as my own wishes went, be most anxious that, in whatever hands it shall be vested, it should possess whatever of strength and efficiency it can receive. But as for undertaking any principal or leading part in the formation of a new Government, to the exclusion of the most considerable persons in this, and of the whole of the other party (who will doubtless on this occasion act with perfect union and concurrence among themselves), I hold the success impossible, and the undertaking much too desperate to be reconciled to any just sense of prudence or duty. And if the fact be so, it is most important that he should be as speedily, and as distinctly as possible, apprized that so it is. And you and Charles would much injure your own reputation and weight by appearing to tamper with a case in which you cannot be of any real use.
I do not wonder that he feels hurt at Canning's speech, such as it is reported; but this is not the first occasion, nor will it be the last, in which the Sovereign of this country must suppress such feelings, and bear with the faults of those who, on the whole, taking all things together, can serve him most usefully; and the manner in which the Opposition have of late years, most unfortunately for themselves and for the country, been drawn on to mix themselves up with projects of reform, and with the countenance and defence of reformers of the wildest description, seems to me, I regret to say it, to throw that balance at this time wholly on the side of their opponents.
I do not know that I can add more. My brother returns to town early to-morrow morning; and you will not wonder, knowing my feelings, that all that is now passing is with me a decisive reason for not coming near it unless commanded so to do, and then it would only be for the purpose of expressing these opinions.
Paris at this period, it is evident, was scarcely in a less excitable state than London:—
HON. COLONEL STANHOPE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Hotel Meurice, June 11, 1820.