u
fairly my opinion and advice in your most arduous situation; and
I will fairly own there is one principle which seems to run
through your different _despatches_, which a little alarms me:
it is this--you seem to think as if it were absolutely necessary
at the outset of your Government, to do something that may
appear to be obtaining _boons_, however trifling, to Ireland;
and what I confess I like still less, is to see that this is, in
some degree, grounded upon the ampleness of former concessions.
Now I see this in quite a different light, and reason that,
because these concessions were so ample, no further ones are
necessary. If, because the Duke of Portland gave much, are you
to give something? Consider how this reasoning will apply to
your successor. I repeat it again, the account must be
considered as closed in 1782.[1]

[Footnote 1: Extracted from a letter published in the Life of Mr.
Grattan.]

It may be observed, _en parenthese_, that the assertion that the Duke of
Portland gave much, is a gratuitous assumption. When his Grace came into
office, he found the Renunciation Bill passing through its last stages,
and he suffered it to pass; but, as Mr. Fox states in this very letter,
with the utmost reluctance. The Duke of Portland, in fact, gave nothing.
He submitted to the measure of his predecessors because he could not
avoid it, and he would have retreated from it if he could.

No useful result would be gained by a comparison between the
intelligible principles and consistency evinced by Lord Temple in his
government of Ireland, and the small views and tremulous policy of his
successor; but it is something to the purpose of history to note that,
while Lord Northington affected to adopt the economical system of Lord
Temple, he secretly desired to stultify it, and that so far from being
actuated by any sentiment of respect for the government of his
predecessor, he suffered the motions of thanks which both Houses of
Parliament voted to Lord Temple, when they met in the following October,
to pass without a solitary expression of approval on the part of any
member of the Administration. These facts are somewhat indignantly
stated in a letter addressed to Lord Temple, by Lord Mornington, on the
18th of October, 1783. Respecting the vote of thanks, his Lordship
observes:

Government had not the spirit to take a part against the motions
of thanks i