e to be with you now in the course of a week; but wait for
your answer to my letters, having heard nothing from you since
yours of the 16th of February. Adieu.

Believe me ever,
My dear brother,
Most affectionately yours,
W. W. G.

[Footnote 1: Query the inserting this, which I omitted in my speech.]

The letter to Mr. Townshend respecting the Irish peerages contained the
expression of a desire on the part of Lord Temple to take His Majesty's
pleasure on the subject of an increase of the Irish peerage. Before Lord
Temple had entered on the Government of Ireland, His Majesty had
communicated to him his disinclination to increase the Irish peerage at
that time; but as a dissolution of Parliament was now proposed, which
would involve in troublesome and expensive contests many gentlemen upon
whom it was supposed His Majesty might be inclined to confer that mark
of the royal favour, and who had been recommended for it by former
Lord-Lieutenants, Lord Temple thought the opportunity favourable for
such a creation. Mr. Townshend's answer, conveying the substance of a
note he had received from the King in reply, is curiously characteristic
of the imperative interest taken by His Majesty in all matters of a
personal nature. After expressing His Majesty's confidence that "Lord
Temple will be as sparing as possible in his list of peers," Mr.
Townshend adds, "Mr. Pennington must be included in the promotions. If
advances are proposed, the Dowager Lady Longford must be a Countess; and
if any peer of a junior date to Lord Dartrey is advanced, he must be
promoted in the same degree."

Under the circumstances in which Lord Temple was placed by the
resignation of Lord Shelburne, and the delays that followed in the
settlement of a new Cabinet, Lord Temple resolved to resign his
Government of Ireland. Unwillingness to embarrass His Majesty
unnecessarily had hitherto restrained him from carrying this resolution
formally into effect; but it appears from the following letters that he
transmitted his final resolution to his brother, who communicated it to
Pitt. The sound judgment of Mr. Grenville is shown with remarkable
clearness in his observations on Lord Temple's answer to the Duke of
Portland, which was not marked with the decision demanded by the
occasion; and his prudence and discretion are equally apparent in the
advice he tenders to Lord Temple, upon the necessity of resigning his
office into the hands