argument in the world.

You will perhaps say that I have already in my possession such a
paper. But I must own I feel great difficulty in fixing the
exact moment when to make use of it, and when to say that I can
no longer in justice to you give credit to assurances of an
immediate determination so often repeated and so often found
fallacious. With you, who have received none such, there is no
such difficulty. Besides, the letter in my hands can only
operate as an actual resignation on your behalf, and authorized
by you; whereas the letter from you, which I propose, would
operate as a threat, and by that means prevent, I believe, the
event itself; or if not, it would at least convince your
feelings, as well as mine, most unequivocally of the absolute
necessity for taking such a measure, as the only one by which
you could preserve either integrity of character or uprightness
of conduct. Such a letter might, if the winds do not prevent it,
be here in a week from this day; and before that time I am most
thoroughly convinced I shall receive not a single word further
than I have already. With such a letter to deliver to Townshend,
I should think myself authorized to _demand_ a Cabinet; or if I
could not obtain that, to make use of your former letter, and
desire from you that I might see the King, to state to him your
sense of the impracticability of such a system, and of the
certainty that Government will be compelled in October to make
concessions without gaining any advantage by them, infinitely
greater than what would in January conciliate the affections of
all Ireland.

One way or other, this business does most certainly draw to a
conclusion. I allow, by this proposal, one week more for them to
take their resolution. If they delay it beyond that, it is in
effect the most mortifying and the most insulting way of
refusing it that they could have adopted; and as such I think
you would do right to state it in your letter. But whichever way
it terminates, I think we shall derive the greatest advantage
from Townshend's having authorized me to promise that on the
21st something should be done in the English House of Commons,
and having sat by and acquiesced in my saying that _that_
something would, I _apprehended_, be brought forward by
Government. If it is not, I think I ne