My Dear Lord,
I have many thanks to return you for your letter. Grenville will probably send you the account we received to-day from Ireland, after a long period of suspense. The motion for bringing in a Bill has been carried only by 127 against 108; and such a victory undoubtedly partakes, for the present at least, of the nature of a defeat. A motion was announced for Monday last, declaratory against the 4th Resolution. The event of this motion seemed to be thought uncertain. The probable issue of all this seems to be that the settlement is put at some distance, but I still believe the principles of it too sound, not to find their way at last.
To the Duke of Rutland he also wrote in the same lofty spirit, using the words quoted at the head of this chapter, and adding that, when experience had brought more wisdom, “we shall see all our views realised in both countries and for the advantage of both.”
Faith and courage such as this are never lost upon colleagues and subordinates, especially when they can rely on loyal support from their chief. Both to the Duke and to Orde Pitt now tendered his thanks for their tact and resolution in face of overwhelming difficulties, and thus manifested that kindliness and magnanimity which wins heartfelt devotion. For, as usually happens after defeat, envious surmises were rife. Some spiteful influence (probably that of the Marquis of Buckingham),[365] had sought to poison Pitt’s mind against Orde as the chief cause of the failure in Dublin. As for Beresford, he believed that some of Pitt’s colleagues had turned traitors. Lesser men might pry into corners to find petty causes for that heart-breaking collapse; but no such suspicions mar the dignity of Pitt’s voluminous correspondence, a perusal of which enables the reader to understand why Orde once exclaimed: “I am so sensible of the manly and noble part which Mr. Pitt has acted, that I will die by inches in the cause of his support.”[366]
The real reason of failure, as Pitt clearly saw, was the determination of powerful factions in both kingdoms to wreck his proposals by representing each concession made to the sister-island as an injury or an insult, or both. At all times it is easier to fan to a flame the fears and jealousies of nations than to allay them; and in that age the susceptibilities both of Britons and Irishmen were highly inflammable. Twelve decades, marked by reforming efforts and closer intercourse, have softened the feelings then so easily aroused; and as we look back over efforts of conciliation, not yet crowned with complete success, we see no figure nobler and more pathetic than that of the statesman who struggled hard to bring together those hitherto alien peoples by the ties of interest and friendship; we see also few figures more sinister than those of his political opponents at Westminster who set themselves doggedly to the task of thwarting his efforts by means of slander and misrepresentation.
CHAPTER XII
PITT AND HIS FRIENDS (1783–94)
Keep thy friend
Under thy own life’s key.
Shakespeare, All’s Well that Ends Well.
A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymball where there is no love.—Bacon.