s the question
further; but I cannot receive from you a letter in which you tell
me that you feel you have lost my affection, without repeating to
you the assurance, which I still hope is not indifferent to you,
that this is not, in the smallest degree, the case. I have intended
to do nothing towards you but what should be the _most_ kind and
affectionate. I think I have so acted; but I am sure that I have so
meant to act. If any contrary impression produces in your mind any
feelings different from those which have made so great a part of my
happiness throughout life, I shall deeply regret what seems to be
annexed as a curse inseparable from the pursuit of a public life;
but I will once more beg you to be assured that neither those
feelings on your part, nor anything which they can produce, will
vary my sincere and heartfelt affection towards you, and that
whether my judgment has been right, as I still think it has, or
wrong, as you think it, my heart is, and shall be, uniformly and
invariably the same towards you.

It is with these sentiments that I shall ever be, my dearest
brother,

Most sincerely and affectionately yours,
GRENVILLE.

Lord Fitzwilliam had scarcely arrived in Ireland when he collected about
him the party with whom he had been in previous communication, and
commenced his new system by a series of dismissals of the former
supporters of Mr. Pitt's Government. Announcing his conviction that the
immediate concession of the Catholic claims was indispensable to the
tranquillity and security of the country, he followed up his objects
with a vigour and expedition that created considerable alarm in England.
The Attorney-General was to be displaced, to make way for Mr. George
Ponsonby; the Solicitor-General was also to be removed, and Mr.
Beresford, who was Purse-bearer to the Chancellor, and Mr. Cooke,
Secretary at War, were to be dismissed. The dismissal of Mr. Beresford
was regarded as a measure of such extreme violence that it brought
matters to an issue between Lord Fitzwilliam and the Cabinet. Some
letters at this time from Mr. Cooke to Lord Buckingham present a
striking _coup d'oeil_ of these affairs, as they appeared to one who was
deeply interested in their progress. Lord Fitzwilliam, it should be
observed, arrived in Ireland on the 5th of January, and the rapidity of
his official movements may be inf