the following letter sent to
Pitt by Lord Redesdale, formerly Sir John Mitford, and now Lord
Chancellor of Ireland, who had been with Pitt and Addington at their
conferences at Bromley:

Albemarle St., _April 16, 1803_.[652]

What passed yesterday and the day before at Bromley Hill, has
made so strong an impression on my mind that I have been unable
to relieve myself from the anxiety which it has occasioned.
However you may flatter yourself to the contrary, it seems to me
most clear that your return into office, with the impression
under which you have appeared to act, must have the effect of
driving from their situations every man now in office, and
making a greater change than has ever been made on any similar
occasion. I think myself as one of those persons individually
intitled to call upon your honour not to pursue the line of
conduct which you seem determined to adopt. The present
Administration, so far from having been formed in hostility to
you, was avowedly formed of your friends. When you quitted
office, you repeatedly declared that you should consider
yourself as obliged to those friends who would continue in
office or would accept office under Mr. Addington. You must
recollect that I expressed to you my disapprobation of the
change and my wish to retire to my situation at the Bar,
quitting the office of Attorney-General; and that you used to me
these words--"That you _must_ not do, for my sake." The words
were too strongly impressed upon my mind at the moment to have
escaped my memory. You encouraged me to take the office of
Speaker much against my will. If I had not taken that office,
nothing should have induced me to take that in which I am now
placed, and by which I have been brought into a position of much
anxiety, separated from all my old friends. Many many others are
in similar situations, and all are to be sacrificed to those men
who were said by yourself at the time to be acting in
contradiction to your wishes in quitting their offices or those
who dragged you out of office with them. You will probably tell
me that you have no such intentions, particularly with respect
to myself. But, whatever may be your intentions, such must be
the unavoidable consequence of the changes which you have
determined upon. I thought, when I took a situat