m Lord Clanricarde, with my answer. Lord
Nugent has seen him, and says he is beyond measure flattered,
and well-disposed towards you.

I shall go to Lord Shelburne on Tuesday or Wednesday, and press
him about the peerages, &c., &c. As to applying to Townshend, it
is useless; for he has all the disposition in the world, but not
a jot more.

I own I think the 18th of March will be rather too soon after
the installation, and will look too like a trick, and too much
in the style of the St. Bartholemi: and yet, if you wait much
longer, you will fall among their cursed assizes; besides which,
new grounds for tests will spring up, whereas there are now
none, absolutely none.

Adieu, my dear brother,
Believe me, ever most affectionately yours,
W. W. G.

I think our distant projects for the Government of Ireland, are
something like Horace Walpole's "Butterfly and Rose."

Hester is as well as possible.

Pray be on your guard, as I have great reason to believe that
your conduct is watched, and your language and conversation
reported to Fox, by a man about the Castle, who keeps up a
constant correspondence in that quarter. I need not name him to
you.

On the 17th of February, the terms of the peace were brought under the
consideration of both Houses of Parliament. To do Lord Shelburne
justice, he defended them with considerable ability, as being the best
the country had a right to expect, or, probably, could obtain. In the
Lords, the Address was carried by an insignificant majority: in the
Commons, Ministers were defeated. As it was upon the negotiation and
settlement of the peace that Lord Shelburne had solely relied all along
for the preservation of his Government, the effect of this defeat was
decisive. It was the doom of the Ministry; and the bolt was launched by
that strange combination which had been growing up in secret for several
weeks, which was now openly avowed for the first time, and which was too
powerful to be resisted. The coalition had, in fact, already been
determined upon. Fox frankly stated it, and supported the Amendment,
conjointly with Lord North, in a speech of considerable force and
vehemence. However the House might have been prepared by the rumours of
the day for this result, it excited universal surprise, and not a little
virtuous indignation. Mr. Powis observed that, it was "an age of strange
confede