erica, or the definitive
treaties signed with France and Spain, to think themselves
capable of proposing a well-formed system of commerce, adapted
to the new situation of Great Britain with her late and present
dependencies.

Your Excellency will consider, that we came to the situations we
now possess, in the midst of a session of Parliament, with
almost all the material business of that session unfinished,
indeed, hardly begun, and that, besides Parliamentary affairs,
there never was a time in which the Executive Power was occupied
with a greater variety of complicated and important questions.

Many of the matters to which your Excellency alludes, must
necessarily employ the attention of His Majesty's Ministers for
a long space of time. Your Excellency will, therefore, I hope,
judge of our exertions according to the capacities of ordinary
men, and not according to the rapidity of your Excellency's
conceptions, and the eagerness of your zeal for the prosperity
of Ireland.

I beg pardon for detaining your Excellency so long, but I trust
that what I have written may serve to justify me to your
Excellency, when I confess, that the heavy and severe censures
in your Excellency's letter have produced no other emotions in
my mind than those of astonishment.

I have the honour to be, with the greatest truth and respect, My Lord,
Your Excellency's most obedient humble servant,
North.

Earl Temple, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland

Perhaps "astonishment," after all, was the most convenient refuge for
Lord North, under the circumstances. But it is clear, throughout the
whole correspondence, that, let the responsibility rest where it might,
a delay--fraught with the worst consequences to the repose of the
kingdom--had been suffered to take place, greatly detrimental to the
public service, and personally compromising to Lord Temple. Lord North
himself acknowledges that from the 2nd to the 24th of April was consumed
in the pursuit of measures which ought to have been carried into
operation without delay. The new Ministry confess that they were three
weeks looking for a successor to Lord Temple, instead of having come
into office prepared to fill that important vacancy at once. They could
not plead ignorance of Lord Temple's determination to retire; for he had
apprised the Duke of Portland that his mind was made up before the
c