y the nomination of
Lord Arran, by suffering him to kiss hands, on or before St.
Patrick's Day, for an English Baronage or an Irish Marquisate,
given to him, or given to Lord Mountrath and entailed upon him,
he would come no more to Court; which curious condition, you may
believe, has not been complied with; and consequently, said the
King, I shall be delivered from the trouble of seeing him.

You will easily suppose that I have not been able to recollect
the precise words of a conversation so very diffuse, upon so
many different subjects, and which lasted from eleven at night
till past one this morning.

Upon the whole, what I collect from his conversation, and from
the sort of impression which the whole tenour of his language,
rather than from any one particular expression, is that in the
case which you supposed, and upon which you acted, nothing could
be more agreeable to him than your resignation; especially, as
he observed to me several times, that it was impossible he could
wish that such a Government should last; and mentioned a message
which he sent through Lord Ashburton to Lord Shelburne, that he
should consider him as a disgraced man if, after their conduct
towards him, he ever "_supported them in Government_, or joined
them in opposition;" (these were the precise words he used to
me.) I collect the same idea also from the expression of _some
cases_ in which you could not stay, and the eagerness with which
he joined in with me when I took occasion to observe to him that
the system of the Duke of Portland and Fox in Ireland had been
so different from yours, as to put you under an impossibility of
remaining under them. This point, therefore, I conceive to be
clear, that in such an event, your resignation would be as
acceptable to him as I think it would be honourable to yourself.

But from the request he has made you, and from the particular
pains he seems to take to throw the onus (as he called it) of
breaking off the negotiation with the Duke of Portland and Lord
North upon their shoulders, I think we must conclude that he
considers that as being entirely at an end, and that he has
something else in view; though what that something else can
possibly be, I am utterly at a loss to imagine.

At the same time, I think the opportunity of doing a handsome
thing