use, if you had known that they were determined to
admit no recognition of the existing right, it would have been
well worth considering whether anything short of that would not
be worse than as it was before. Instead of that, they receive
your resolutions and your Bill, and then pledge themselves, and
suffer me to pledge both them and you to _a Bill_; after which,
they first say that they will allow of nothing which admits the
_original_ right, and when beat from that ground, that they will
not have anything asserting the _present_ right. It then only
remained, as we were pledged to _a Bill_, to consider whether
this was not the best form of a Bill to be drawn on such
principles.

Whatever your answer has been to Townshend's despatch, I hope at
least that it has been coolly and temperately expressed, as he
told me he meant to represent to you that an advantage had been
taken against you from the warmth of your late despatches.

Another advantage which will arise from deferring the second
reading will be, that by that time this strange, unsettled
situation of things must have taken some form; and I do not
believe that this form will be such as you will choose to act
under in Ireland. In that case, it certainly will not be worth
our while to engage our characters to a measure which the folly
of your successor may render pernicious; which must at all
events be precarious; and which England will most certainly
repent whenever the hour of her insolence shall return. We took
the business out of the hands of Lord Beauchamp, because it
ought to be conducted by Government; and that will be the best
reason for resigning it into other hands whenever we shall cease
to stand in that character; which _whenever_ must, I think,
arrive in the course of a very few days.

Jemmy is to dine at Lord Shelburne's on Monday, when he will
probably be able to tell you more. I go to Townshend to-morrow,
and mean to try what I can get from him.

At least we have the satisfaction to reflect, that if your reign
has been short, it has not been dishonourable to you; and that
having taken the Government at a most difficult and inauspicious
moment, you will quit it with more real and more deserved
popularity than the Duke of Portland, notwithstanding the
uncommon advantages which threw themselves in