The principal objects to which Lord Temple had directed his attention were the Bill of Renunciation, and a wise economy in the public expenditure. The former he carried; the latter it was impossible to consolidate in the short term of six months. In his indefatigable labours for the good of Ireland he never stooped to conciliate faction at the cost of duty, or the sacrifice of principle. He administered his high office to promote the interests, and not to pander to the passions of the people. The Bill of Renunciation was said to have been a scheme of Mr. Flood's; but by taking charge of it himself, Lord Temple deprived it of the mischievous prestige it might have acquired under such dangerous auspices. The Bill, however, was not Mr. Flood's. Whatever merit, or demerit attaches to it, belongs exclusively to Lord Temple. Lord Northington, overlooking the fact that this Bill was simply a confirmation of the settlement of 1782, and that it really granted nothing new, endeavoured to make it a fulcrum for working further changes and more extensive concessions—not, it may be presumed, without an indirect view to the improvement of his own popularity. The mode in which he thus proposed to carry out Lord Temple's policy provoked the Government, at last, to remonstrate with him. Even Mr. Fox, who could not be suspected of any disinclination to give a patient hearing to Irish demands, seeing the part he had already taken on such questions, felt it necessary to check his exuberant zeal on behalf of the particular party, whose views and opinions he had so injudiciously adopted. On the 8th of November, he wrote to Lord Northington an admonishing letter upon a variety of points connected with Irish affairs, towards the conclusion of which he observed:
I hope, my dear Northington, you will not consider this long letter as meant to blame your conduct; but I think I owe it as much to my friendship for you as to the public, to give you fairly my opinion and advice in your most arduous situation; and I will fairly own there is one principle which seems to run through your different despatches, which a little alarms me: it is this—you seem to think as if it were absolutely necessary at the outset of your Government, to do something that may appear to be obtaining boons, however trifling, to Ireland; and what I confess I like still less, is to see that this is, in some degree, grounded upon the ampleness of former concessions. Now I see this in quite a different light, and reason that, because these concessions were so ample, no further ones are necessary. If, because the Duke of Portland gave much, are you to give something? Consider how this reasoning will apply to your successor. I repeat it again, the account must be considered as closed in 1782.[1]
[1] Extracted from a letter published in the Life of Mr. Grattan.
It may be observed, en parenthèse, that the assertion that the Duke of Portland gave much, is a gratuitous assumption. When his Grace came into office, he found the Renunciation Bill passing through its last stages, and he suffered it to pass; but, as Mr. Fox states in this very letter, with the utmost reluctance. The Duke of Portland, in fact, gave nothing. He submitted to the measure of his predecessors because he could not avoid it, and he would have retreated from it if he could.
No useful result would be gained by a comparison between the intelligible principles and consistency evinced by Lord Temple in his government of Ireland, and the small views and tremulous policy of his successor; but it is something to the purpose of history to note that, while Lord Northington affected to adopt the economical system of Lord Temple, he secretly desired to stultify it, and that so far from being actuated by any sentiment of respect for the government of his predecessor, he suffered the motions of thanks which both Houses of Parliament voted to Lord Temple, when they met in the following October, to pass without a solitary expression of approval on the part of any member of the Administration. These facts are somewhat indignantly stated in a letter addressed to Lord Temple, by Lord Mornington, on the 18th of October, 1783. Respecting the vote of thanks, his Lordship observes:
Government had not the spirit to take a part against the motions of thanks in either House, but I have every reason to think that they would have done it, if there had been the smallest prospect of success in the attempt. You must observe that the vote of the House of Commons is much weaker than that of the Lords; Gardiner was obliged, by the interference of Government's friends, to omit several expressions which, if they had been retained, would have rendered the vote more just to your Lordship's Administration, but would have occasioned debate. The fact is, that no compliment to the Act of Renunciation, or even to the framer of it, can be borne with patience by certain supporters of the present Castle.
And in the report of his own speech on this occasion, which accompanies the letter, Lord Mornington plainly charges the Government with duplicity in reference to Lord Temple's system of economy. Referring to a passage in the Lord-Lieutenant's speech, where his Excellency, in recommending the establishment of the Genevans, reminded Parliament of their duty to "avoid unnecessary expense," his Lordship expresses a hope that in "other cases, where all profusion would be dangerous, and where the public safety demanded the most rigid economy, in the establishments of Government, his Excellency would think it his duty to avoid all unnecessary expense;" and then, comparing the recommendation respecting the Genevans with another passage where his Excellency applied for a supply, and in which "his Excellency's economy made no appearance," Lord Mornington goes on to say:
Comparing the two passages of the speech, he [Lord Mornington] was apt to imagine that the expression, "unnecessary expense," was dictated by another spirit, and with other views, than of saving to the public: he suspected that it was meant to insinuate by so special, and seemingly superfluous a recommendation of economy in the further progress of the establishment of the Genevans, that there had been some neglect of economy in the original foundation of the scheme; if that was meant, he called upon the confidential servants of the Castle to avow it; if not, he insisted that they should do justice to the personage who had originally framed this plan, and disclaim his construction of this ambiguous phrase. He knew what had been the language of the Castle on this subject; he knew how this scheme had been decried; and what a damp had been cast upon the proposers of it—such a damp, as he had reason to believe, that the settlement had not advanced one step since the departure of Lord Temple; and he would add, in justice both to the late and present Ministry, that he, in his conscience, believed, if the public were put to any unnecessary expense by the settlement, it must be attributed solely and entirely to the delays and impediments which had been thrown in its way by the present Castle.
On a subsequent day, moving the thanks of the House to Lord Temple, Lord Mornington delivered an eloquent panegyric upon his Government. He spoke of the Act of Renunciation as having produced an "instantaneous calm in Ireland," and, adverting to other matters, observed:
These were the great public acts of Lord Temple's Government, the nation at large had felt their effects, the Lord-Lieutenant had from the throne applauded them; the House itself had applauded them in detail, and therefore would not object to doing so in the gross, which he now called upon the House to do. With regard to the general attention of Lord Temple to the common duties of his office, and his management of the interior system of government here, he would deliver no opinion of his own; he would appeal to those whose high stations and confidential offices gave them constant access to the person and councils of Lord Temple, to testify his ability and assiduity in business, the extent of his researches, the vigilance with which he penetrated into the secrets of departments where the most gross rapine and peculation had been practised for ages with impunity, and particularly the firm integrity with which he resisted all jobs, however speciously concealed, or powerfully recommended.