s, that if it
conveyed to you any impression different from that of the sincere
friendship and affection which dictated it, it very ill expressed
my feelings.

With respect to the rest, I can only say that, to the best of my
understanding, I have neither disavowed nor abandoned you, but
given a _very strong_ proof of my determination to do neither; that
I cannot believe that any such impression exists anywhere; that not
knowing the proofs of its existence, to which you refer, I can only
guess at them, and I therefore forbear to make upon them the
remarks to which, if my conjecture is right, they are so obviously
liable. But that I am at a loss even to guess at the meaning of
that part of your letter, which speaks of proofs laying before you
of some compact made on this subject above twelve months since, not
having, in my own mind, the smallest idea of the fact to which this
can refer.

Having never had any intention to disavow you, or to consent to any
system or measure to which I thought you could wish to object, it
was impossible for me to make to you any previous communication of
such intention.

The detail of all that passed respecting Lord Fitzwilliam's
appointment would be too long to go into now; and I have reason to
believe that you are not unacquainted with many of the
circumstances which would prove how very little idea there was of
concealment or mystery on my part respecting that subject. From the
first moment that you stated to me that you considered the idea of
giving to the Ponsonbys a share of office in Ireland as a measure
injurious to you, I explained to you my reasons for viewing it in a
different light. But I anxiously reconsidered the object in my own
mind, and I then acted, as I was bound to do, on my deliberate and
fixed opinion respecting a point which, in either view of it, was
of much too great public importance to make it possible for me to
decide it merely on the desire I must ever feel to consult your
wishes in preference to my own. Which of us is right in our view of
this question, it is not for me to say. The motives and grounds of
my opinion remain the same; and I see with regret that they do not
make on your mind the impression they have made on mine.

It would be a painful and invidious task to discus