Certainly, your description of the discussion for and against the proposed relief to the Catholics is not encouraging, any more than the prospect which the papers seem to hold out of the rejection of the Grampound Bill by the majority of the Cabinet, in contradiction to Lord Liverpool's support. The King's demonstrations of renewed intercourse with the great peers of opposition must also, in such a moment, be a source of weakness, as well as of personal vexation.
In this state of things, I do not wonder that both parts of the Government should be unwilling to stir this Catholic question again in any shape; and I certainly see no such benefit likely to arise from doing so in the mode of partial relief, as to induce the friends of conciliation on a larger scale to embark in any such proposal as this limited measure holds out.
If any other proof were wanted beyond what the general view of the subject affords, to convince any reasonable man that this mode of treating the most important of all our present public interests as no Government question, is the worst instead of the best that could be adopted, Lord Londonderry's[64] ] own situation in respect of this subject at this moment would be decisive against it. He has, I am persuaded, been restrained only by that pledge from taking the only course which becomes him on the subject, and which, if he had adopted it in consequence of the passing of the Bill in the House of Commons, would have been decisive in its favour in its subsequent stages. Having neglected to do this at that time, I myself think that his doing it now would be a step of much more doubtful result, and probably of much more dangerous consequences, and therefore, if I were his adviser, which I am very glad I am not, I do not see what I could suggest but now to leave the matter as it is. Shall we see you on Monday? As to the direct reference which Lord L——'s conversation seems to have had to yourself and your own conduct, in respect to making yourself, personally and officially, a party to this system of treating the greatest of all questions in our domestic policy as no Cabinet measure, what I have already said will sufficiently show you my opinion. It is a mode of getting rid of a present difficulty, but at the risk and almost certainty of the greatest possible embarrassments in future. And this deserves the greater consideration, inasmuch as the events of this session have again rendered this Roman Catholic question so very prominent a feature of all that can be looked to for some time to come.
LORD GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Dropmore, Sunday Night.
I have just got your letter, and write these few lines to save the post, though I have, in truth, in what I wrote to Charles this morning, said all that occurs to me as material on the subject.
It is of great importance that you should not appear, either to Plunket or to others, to stir a single step in the matter without his previous approbation.
I most entirely agree in the utter impossibility of either yourself or Wellesley, or any other supporter of the Catholic Bill, bringing forward any such proposition as this, or even acquiescing in it, except under an express and positive declaration that you do so only as seeing in it an advance, however small, towards the final and total accomplishment of that which can alone satisfy your own duty and opinion on this subject.
How can Lord Londonderry or any of his colleagues think that any of those who were turned out in 1807, precisely because they would not pledge themselves to any truce or cessation of this question short of its total and final accomplishment, would now lend themselves to such a measure for the sake of obtaining for the Catholics benefits so small that it is even doubtful (as I explained to Charles this morning, according to my view of the subject,) whether they or their opponents would gain most by thus varying the state of the question?
I forget which bishop it was that was foolish enough to express his hope that the present rejection of the Bill would finally set the question at rest. But I well remember that I noticed this nonsensical expectation in the course of what I said, and assured him that it neither ought to have, nor would have, that effect.