Keith Stewart answered Johnstone, defending Lord Howe very warmly. Everybody who spoke after Johnstone reprobated him. Duke of Richmond attacked Lord Sandwich.
MR. W. W. GRENVILLE TO LORD TEMPLE.
Pall Mall, Saturday, Dec. 7th, 1782.
My dear Brother,
I received your packet late on Thursday night, or rather, I believe, early on Friday morning. As soon as I was up I sent the enclosed letter to Lord Shelburne and to Townshend. I received from Lord Shelburne an answer appointing me in an hour's time.
When I went there, after waiting a considerable time (which I can easily excuse when I reflect upon the business of this moment), I was shown into a room, where he was with Townshend. It is difficult for me to say whether I was more surprised or mortified at his telling me, as soon as I came in, that he could only see me for a minute or two. He then entered upon the subject of your letter, by saying that he had not read Mr. Townshend's despatches, but only your letter to himself and the bill which you enclosed to Townshend. With respect to the bill, he said nothing could be done without consulting the Chancellor and the other lawyers of the Cabinet; that I must see the Chancellor, and explain the business to him; that the rendering a judgment null might be objected to. I answered that I was persuaded that was the part on which you was least bent, and that you would be fully satisfied if the enacting clause went only to prevent any future decisions, provided the preamble expressed the principle. To this he said, that it was impossible to go on if everything of this sort made a necessity for new measures, and that when a ground was once taken, it ought to be stood to. My answer was, that your ground was very materially changed, and that this overturned the only reasoning upon which you had been able to go on at all, namely, the pledging your own personal faith, and the honour of Government here, that the repeal of the G. I. was considered as a renunciation on the part of Great Britain of all legislation and jurisdiction. He asked whether I meant external as well as internal? I said, undoubtedly. He said, that he had understood from your conversation before you went, "that you meant to make your stand upon the external legislation;" and for this he appealed to Townshend, who said he had understood the same. It was impossible for me to contradict this, as it referred to conversations to which I was no party. He said that he thought you was reasonable upon the subject of the dissolution, and that this other business was not to be taken up suddenly. I asked what then he wished me to do. He told me to wait upon the Chancellor. I objected that the question was not a legal one, but wholly political. I urged the consequences of delay. Still, however, I could get no answer from him, but only that I must go to the Chancellor; and at last he grew so impatient as to leave the room while I was talking, and to tell Townshend that he might find him in his (Lord Shelburne's) office. The whole conversation did not last above four or five minutes at the utmost. I turned to Townshend, and asked him if he thought it possible that the Government of Ireland could go on in this manner. He pressed me to go to the Chancellor, and said that he could tell me, en ami, that I should do more good there in three minutes than I could do elsewhere in as many hours.
By the way, I must say here, that by some inaccuracy I must have explained myself very ill to you about Townshend, who seems to me to have acted the most friendly and honest part towards you in the course of the whole business, and who has sacrificed his time to me for an hour or an hour and a half for several days; while during the fortnight I have now been here, I have not seen Lord Shelburne for twenty minutes in the whole.
I have been very particular in detailing the above conversation to you, because I think it opens two things of infinite importance to your personal comfort and your personal honour. I think it extremely plain that the object of Lord Shelburne is to gain time, and that let me press ever so eagerly, which I shall not fail to do, still I am not to expect any final answer till the negotiation is settled, and the peace, which they evidently look upon as certain, is secured and announced. What effect these delays may have in Ireland, and what appearance this state of uncertainty must bear to those who know the proposal you have made, you are best able to judge, but I know enough of it to be very much alarmed. But the second consideration affects me much more, as I think it affects your honour, and my own as involved with it. What I mean is this: I threw out to you in my former letters that Lord Shelburne appears to me much more disposed to narrow than to extend the rights and concessions yielded to Ireland by Great Britain. I think when you compare the evident reluctance he showed to agree to the resolutions first proposed; his telling me that he had thought of a paragraph in the King's Speech to do instead of them; his then showing me a paragraph relating merely to commercial advantages, and his telling me we were not ripe for the word rights; when you compare all this with his evident dislike to this bill, and with the expression stated above about external legislation, it is not very difficult to collect that he means to do nothing till we have peace, and when we have, he means, to use his own expression, to make the stand upon that point.
Possibly I may agree with him, that it might have been well for the general interest of the empire if that ground had originally been explained, decisively taken and maintained. But I am sure I know too well the situation of that country and of this, to think that it can now be held out without the most fatal consequences to both; and I think I know your feelings too well to imagine that you will suffer yourself to be made an instrument of deceiving any man or body of men whatever, still less a whole country, especially in contradiction to the language which you have invariably held, at least as far as I can recollect (ever since you accepted of your situation), both to people in Ireland and to Government here, that the repeal was a complete renunciation.
It is a singular pleasure to me to observe how exactly our ideas have hitherto corresponded since I left you; so that while you have been taking your measures in Ireland, I have been recommending the same to you from hence. If they should continue to do so in this instance, the line of conduct which I apprehend would be proper for us to adopt on our different posts is this. I am to see the Chancellor to-morrow, and immediately upon leaving him mean to write to Lord Shelburne, pressing him again most eagerly to allow me an opportunity of stating to him at length what I have in commission to say to him from you. If he should comply, I will then go into the whole state of Ireland; will mention to him the credit which ought to be given to representations proceeding from you, in preference to those of interested individuals; will enlarge upon the necessity of decision; and will press that a Cabinet may be held in performance of Townshend's promise to me. In the meantime, I should think you would do well to write a letter to Townshend, stating your ideas upon the necessity of good faith, and the impossibility of resistance, even upon the ground of simple repeal, still more upon the more narrow one of external legislation; and desiring an explicit answer from the Cabinet on these points. This, if you would entrust me with it, I would suppress in case the Cabinet should have met and come to any satisfactory decision; and if not, I would deliver it to Townshend, with every personal expression to him of regard, &c., &c.