ded to, and has met with
the most speedy decision that each case would admit of), but to
some great commercial points, upon which your Excellency had
written at different times to the late Administration, and which
had not, as I collect from your Excellency's letter, been
considered, when they quitted His Majesty's service.

I well remember, that Lord Carlisle very fully and clearly
stated, very earnestly and repeatedly pressed, the demands of
Ireland, with respect to the refusal of Portugal to admit their
woollen goods. Lord Hillsborough, then Secretary of State, urged
the claim of Ireland with much zeal and perseverance in his
despatches to the Court of Portugal, and in his conferences with
the Portuguese Minister in London. What was done in that
business by the late Administration I know not: nothing of that
sort has yet come to my knowledge; but, during the few days that
we have been in office, the Secretary of State for the Foreign
Department has renewed this negotiation with Monsieur de Pinto,
and I doubt not but it will be pursued with all the attention
that so important a question deserves. But it is singular, that
His Majesty's present servants should be criminated for not
having finished in the first busy three weeks of a new
Administration what has been depending during the two last
Ministries, and, notwithstanding the efforts of one of them at
least, is by no means so far advanced as to promise an immediate
conclusion.

That the interests of Ireland should not be separated from those
of Great Britain in any commercial treaty with France and Spain,
and that they should be considered in every arrangement with the
United States of America, are important truths, upon which your
Excellency, with much propriety, lays a great stress. They
cannot be urged too often or too strongly; but whether your
Excellency has any particular measures to suggest on these
heads, or whether the late Administration, when they signed the
provisional articles, and projected the commercial treaties with
the House of Bourbon, had formed any detailed and digested plan
upon these principles, I am not informed; but this is certain,
that it would have been very hasty and rash, for His Majesty's
servants in the first hurry of a new arrangement, before any
commercial treaty is formed with Am