firming, in fact, the perfect independence of Ireland, legislative,
judicial and commercial. This Bill had given complete satisfaction to
the popular leaders. Even the Volunteers declared themselves appeased,
and adopted final resolutions to that effect. But the factious and
jealous spirit of the Irish was subsequently disturbed by indications on
the part of the English Legislature of a disposition to depart in some
particulars from this settlement, and by the unfortunate incident of
some Irish appeals which lay over for judgment in England, the authority
to adjudicate them having been relinquished, or disavowed, by the
measure alluded to. The whole matter turned upon distinctions, but they
were sufficient to influence the distrust of the turbulent, who were
ready to seize upon any excuse for expressing their impatience of
English authority. The introduction of a singular Bill by Lord Abingdon,
having for its object the assertion of the sole and exclusive right of
Great Britain to regulate her external commerce, and that of all
countries under her sovereignty, and repealing so much of the former
Bill as took that power out of the Parliament of Great Britain and
vested it in the Parliament of Ireland, had the effect of affording an
abundant pretext to the uneasiness which was now beginning to grow up in
Ireland, and which Mr. Grattan exerted his utmost influence to dispel.
Want of confidence, also, in the sincerity of Lord Shelburne's Ministry
yielded an additional ground for national discontent. "Things were never
more unsettled than they are at present," Mr. Perry writes to Mr.
Grattan, in October, 1782; "some of the Ministry here are at open enmity
with each other, and everybody seems to distrust the head." Such was the
state of their affairs when Mr. William Wyndham Grenville came over to
London to communicate confidentially with the Government on the part of
his brother, the Lord-Lieutenant. The correspondence in which he details
from day to day the results of his interviews with Ministers, and his
observations upon the net-work of small difficulties in which he was
involved by the want of unity in the Cabinet--especially between Mr.
Townshend and Lord Shelburne on the Irish questions--is minute and
voluminous; and only a few letters have been selected from the mass to
show the course of ministerial diplomacy in reference to the equivocal
relations subsisting at that period between the two countries. They form
a runni