eady been written before I
received yours of the 11th of August, which did not reach me till
the 2nd instant. I am very sincerely rejoiced to find by it that
you have made your decision for Ireland, because I believe that
much good may be done there, by your taking that heavy load upon
your shoulders; and although you are wanted enough both in London
and Yorkshire, I am persuaded that for public objects you are still
most wanted at Dublin. I am not enough acquainted with the interior
there, to judge how far the means (as Government now stands) are
competent to the end, or to what degree you may be able to supply
all those links of connection between the two countries, which have
latterly appeared to be very much worn away and broken through. I
presume that it will be found easy enough to continue the same
negative course of administration, and that it will be a work of
great difficulty and delicacy for you to do all that you will think
should be done; I am, therefore, from a strong persuasion of the
arduousness of the task, well pleased to know that it is in such
good hands.

With respect to my undertaking the office of Secretary, I am very
far from being confident that I should be able to make myself, in
that situation, as useful to you as it undoubtedly should be made.
You know it is not the first moment in which I have expressed my
doubts as to that employment, since it is twelve years ago that the
same objections presented themselves to me; and if I still feel the
weight of them, it is not from any disinclination to pull at my oar
in the galley, or from any reluctance to take part in public
measures at a time when I think, as you do, that everything is at
stake; on the contrary, I confess that, all other considerations
put apart, I shall be gratified in making myself actively one of a
system with which the prosperity of the country will, I am
persuaded, be to stand or fall; and I shall be best gratified by
doing this in whatever shape it could be hoped that I should be
serviceable. To foreign mission, I own I know not how to reconcile
myself; and for Ireland, besides my own disinclination to it, I
should have thought Pelham better suited, as I have often told you.
But my own opinion upon this, as upon all other subjects, gives way
to the b