You will probably have heard from other quarters of the intended appointment of Lord Francis Conyngham to be Canning's Under-Secretary of State. I only know it from report, but am disposed to believe it; and it is added that the King on his late visit to Brighton leant on his shoulder and patted his head.
I cannot conceive how Lord F. C—— can retain the Mastership of the Robes.
The next report is that the newly-erected pillar of orthodoxy, young Bankes, has to encounter an action for crim. con. from Lord Buckinghamshire, and that Scarlet is retained for the plaintiff.
Surely Wellesley is making too ridiculous a parade, even for the taste of Paddy, when he talks of the horror, the awful moment, &c.; and when we consider that the King and his father have both had to encounter bullets, it is but in proper subordination that the piece of a rattle and of a glass bottle should be directed against the occupant of "the throne on which he has been placed by the favour of his Sovereign."
Still it may be of use towards the suppression of the Orange Lodges, which I have great hopes will result from it. It has been proposed to extend the English Act against Secret Societies, to Ireland, with a view to some of the cases of conspiracy which they have been unable to deal with; and upon mentioning to Peel that that was the Act upon which the House of Commons in general agreed in 1813 to consider the Orange Association as illegal, I had much pleasure to see that he looked upon this as a recommendation rather than an objection.
The conduct of Villele is to me quite inexplicable, nor can I conceive his motive for resorting to so offensive and irritating a step as the publication of a despatch (in itself calculated to provoke a war) immediately after he had triumphed over the war party, and their expulsion from the Cabinet.
Ever most faithfully yours,
C. Williams Wynn.