with _eclat_. Your Majesty will judge my mortification in
finding this kingdom engaged in a ferment on a constitutional
question more violent than that which had preceded Lord
Carlisle's departure, and that ferment much increased by the
injudicious arrangement of a measure, which might have been
truly useful if conducted with address--I mean that of the
provincial levies--but which, from circumstances infinitely too
long for the present detail, totally defeated the only essential
object which it ought to have accomplished, the division of the
Volunteers. To this spirit of dissatisfaction, arising from
these two essential objects, I had not the shadow of Government
to oppose. Those who composed it were respectable for their
integrity, and had been high in popular estimation; but many
circumstances concurred to weaken the advantages which were
proposed from their support: the want of knowledge and habits of
office, the thirst of popularity which pervaded them all, and
the fetters which they had forged for themselves by popular
questions during an opposition of fifteen years, by making them
timid and undecided, rendered them wholly unfit for the defence
of Government. The several characters respectable for their
services, their rank, their connections and their influence, had
been systematically and ostentatiously depressed, except in the
sole instance of Mr. Ponsonby, whose influence was unbounded,
and brought forward that spirit of discontented jealousy, of
which your Majesty well remembers instances in the last weeks of
the Irish Sessions. The variety of dismissals, some of which
were considered as peculiarly cruel, had weakened every
confidence in Government, and had spread an apprehension and
distrust through every Board and Department. And the natural
consequence of this was, that the interior business of the
kingdom was much at a stand, while the general expectation was
raised, by professions, to a pitch, which it would have been
found difficult to gratify in a country where the offices are
really insufficient to the purposes of Government. And at the
same time, the confidence which had been given to the
Volunteers, by the attention paid to them at every meeting, had
drawn them into the discussion of every speculative question
which could embarrass the public service.