ans pleasant to you. In this I
agreed most fully.

The difficulty, he told me, lay in bringing them to think of
anything but the peace, by which you see that business is still
_en train_.

This consideration makes me less eager than I should otherwise
be to cut the matter short. I continue to think, that if they
are sufficiently pressed, you will carry your point; because I
am fully persuaded they will not push you to the wall. In the
meantime they feel the situation into which the notice for the
House of Commons has thrown them; for Townshend expressed his
satisfaction at it to-day, and said it lay a necessity on
Government to do something.

While I am writing this, I receive your letters of the 21st. The
despatch will, I think, have a good effect in pressing the thing
forward, and assisting the exertions which I sincerely believe
Townshend will make. At the same time, as it must now be the
27th at soonest before you can receive this letter, which leaves
everything exactly where my last despatches to you did, I should
think upon the receipt of it you would do well to write a letter
to Townshend, rather demanding than requesting an immediate
answer.

What I mean is (if you should approve of the idea), that you
should say, "that after having so repeatedly stated the grounds
of your proposal, to which you can now add nothing," (because
any reasoning of yours brings on more discussion) "except that
every day gives fresh force to them, you have nothing left but
to request, as your situation entitles you to do, that you may
at last have an immediate and explicit answer, in order that on
the one hand you may not disgrace your personal honour and the
faith of Great Britain by continuing to pledge them to
assurances which are not to be performed, nor on the other hand
appear by remaining in your situation without a favourable
answer, to countenance a system which your own mind informs you
to be at once unjust and impracticable." If you think the
expressions too strong, or not sufficiently so, you will weaken
or aggravate them; but I am very impatient to receive some such
letter, which shall _not_ enter into reasons or discussion on a
subject so completely exhausted, but shall manifest your own
intention, which I am convinced will operate more strongly than
all the