LORD LIFFORD TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Royal Hotel, Pall Mall,
Saturday, August 30th, 1788.
My very good Lord,
My complaints at times to your Excellency, and my apprehensions expressed to you that bodily weakness and the infirmities of old age were coming upon me apace, will prevent your Excellency from being much surprised when I tell you that my journey hither, which at first I thought would have relieved me, hath served only to confirm me in the apprehensions I had conceived that the hour of infirmity, which is an enemy to all exertion, and first weakens and slackens the course of business, and soon afterwards disables, was not far off.
I now grow so clumsy and weak in my limbs, and so soon grow tired and fatigued to a degree painful to me, that although my mind seems as well as ever, yet I am sure that I cannot long do my duty, and there is nothing I dread so much as sitting upon a great seat of justice as a kind of ruin, and in a state of decay. In my seventy-fourth year, I am not sure that avarice may not lay hold of me, and tempt me to stay where I am, until I feel or am made to feel, by being told that I have stayed too long; and that peevishness too, an attendant upon old age, may not put an end to that command of temper, which I have ever endeavoured to preserve; and that, with such enemies to fair fame, I may soon impair and sully the character and esteem which I may at present have.
Under these impressions, my wishes to retire become divided, which they were not until within these few days past. I should have been happy in first declaring this to you, wishing in everything to do that which but expresses my sincere attachment to and regard for your Excellency. But being going into the royal presence, I resolved to lay myself at His Majesty's feet, and express to him my apprehensions and my wishes to retire, if I could do so in a manner honourable and convenient to myself, when His Majesty's service would admit of it. Accordingly, yesterday, in the closet, I did as I had resolved. His Majesty's kindness and goodness to me was beyond what I can express. Retirement, before decay actually comes on, meets his ideas perfectly; and I have every reason to think that I am lucky in the choice I have made of the present opportunity.
I have also communicated my wishes to Mr. Pitt, who received me with attention and kindness. He said he would confer with His Majesty upon the subject, and forthwith communicate the matter to you, without whose participation and concurrence I cannot be at ease and happy. Upon a measure of such importance as this is to me, I exceedingly wish that you should be possessed of the motives and principles upon which I act; and I will state them to you without reserve. But permit me first to say, that I hope and think that avarice cannot be imputed to me; for, parting with £10,000 per annum, for what must be greatly below it, excludes the imputation. Ambition must be equally out of the question, for I want no advancement in the Peerage.
Now, as to my motives and principles at this time. I am in my seventy-fourth year, and although my mind, assisted by experience for a number of years, that makes few things new to me, may be as good as ever, yet the weakness of my limbs, my inability to go through any bodily fatigue, and many other monitions that tell me the day of great infirmity is at hand, ought not to be unattended to by any man who hath sound sense or any religion about him.
I stand well, as I flatter myself, with the people of Ireland, to whom I have administered justice for more than twenty years, with both Houses of Parliament, and with the Bar of Ireland; with all of whom I have lived without a quarrel with any man, but I hope without forgetting what belonged to me to be mindful of.