[232] Thomas Pelham was first appointed Chief Secretary by Lord Camden when he became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1795. Owing to ill-health he was often absent, and early in 1798 Lord Castlereagh temporarily took his place. Pelham finally resigned the post on November 2.
[233] See ante, p. 12.
[234] Mrs ‘Bobus’ Smith. Lady Warwick was her sister (see ante, p. 163).
[235] In February 1797, when owing to the scarcity of specie the Ministers issued an Order in Council prohibiting cash payments until measures had been taken by Parliament to restore the credit of the country.
[236] On December 11, in favour of concluding peace with the French Republic, whenever a suitable opportunity should occur. Pitt called the speech ‘one of the best ever heard on any occasion.’
[237] Lord Lauderdale in a letter, written in 1809, to Lord Holland, strongly upholds this view, and gives an amusing story of Sheridan’s groom’s opinion of Canning. ‘Sheridan’s groom being told by his butler many years ago that he had laid a plate too few at table, enumerated the company he supposed was to dine, and on being informed that he had forgot Mr. Canning, said, “D—n that fellow. He has impudence for anything! What! Come here and dine with my master after deserting all the principles that you and I have heard him so often hold forth upon”’ (Holland House MSS.).
[238] Charles Rose Ellis (1771–1845), son of John Ellis, of Jamaica, and Elizabeth, daughter of John Pallmer, also of that island. He entered Parliament in 1793 and sat continuously for various seats until his elevation to the peerage, by Canning’s influence, in 1826, as Baron Seaford. He married, first, in 1798, Elizabeth Catherine, only daughter of John Augustus, Lord Hervey, and grand-daughter of Frederick, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry. Their son succeeded his great-grandfather in the title of Lord Howard de Walden.
[239] He was placed in confinement by the French, into whose hands he had fallen, and at the same time a valuable collection of antiquities which he was about to despatch to England was confiscated.
[240] On January 22 a message was presented to both Houses of Parliament from the King suggesting that their immediate attention should be directed to measures for obtaining a closer and more satisfactory connection between the kingdoms of England and Ireland. A few days after, a proposal for a Union was laid before the Irish Parliament, but was rejected, Pitt, in the debate in the House of Commons on the 31st, stated that he thought it proper to unfold his proposed scheme, though he was fully aware that there was no chance of its adoption unless the Irish Parliament were willing to alter their present views.
[241] On January 22. ‘The banner of party is furled, but it is not beaten down. I trust that it will again be displayed and that it will assemble round it the steady friends to true liberty, hostile alike to despotic rule, and to wild innovation.’