power on both sides. Some alarm was
felt by the Cabinet at the list of promotions and creations (nineteen in
number) forwarded on this occasion for the royal sanction. The increase
of the peerage was, perhaps, the only point on which Mr. Pitt's
Government was vulnerable, for, although he exercised the greatest
caution in his selections, and introduced them by degrees, instead of
making them in batches, as the peculiar circumstances of Ireland at this
moment demanded, it was felt to be the objection which, of all others,
operated most injuriously against the character and popularity of his
Administration. His Majesty's engagements, too, enhanced the
embarrassment. Whenever any proposition for honours or appointments,
naval, military, or civil, was submitted to him, it was certain to be
obstructed by some obligation he had previously laid himself under by
promise to different persons. In the present instance a difficulty of
this kind interposed. Two peerages were already engaged in advance, and
the arrangement of the Irish list depended entirely on the nature of the
pledges to which His Majesty had committed himself in these cases. Mr.
Grenville writes that Mr. Pitt was to see His Majesty on the subject in
two or three days. "He will then endeavour to find out whether the
King's engagements were so positive and absolute as to Lords A. and C.
as to lay him under the absolute necessity of conferring this honour on
four persons in order to be able to reward the services of two." It may
be presumed that these engagements were not absolute, or, at all
events, that they were not suffered to interfere with Lord Buckingham's
list, as all the persons he named, with the exception of two or three,
who were excluded on special grounds, received the honours to which he
recommended them.

Amongst these was Mr. Fitzgibbon, Poor old Lord Lifford, who had kept
his seat, and exerted himself indefatigably to the last, died on the
28th of April. The labours of that terrible session proved too much for
his declining powers, and he finally sank under them. The opportunity to
which Mr. Fitzgibbon had been so long looking forward was now thrown
open to him. Lord Buckingham pressed his claims earnestly on the
Government, recounting the signal obligations he had laid them under on
the Regency question, tracing his career, and depicting his character in
terms of the highest eulogy. The appointment rested with Thurlow, whose
humours required to be w