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given a general management and superintendence of Ireland, and had full powers to reform the abuses which they believed to exist in the Irish Government.

The significance of all this was very manifest. Both in home and foreign politics, the Whig leaders who had now joined Pitt were substantially in agreement with Ponsonby and Grattan, and Portland was known to have shared the belief of Fitzwilliam that a completion of Catholic Emancipation was a measure which could not long be safely delayed. Fitzwilliam afterwards declared that on the day when Portland kissed hands, which was before Fitzwilliam had accepted the viceroyalty, it was determined in Ireland to bring forward the Catholic question. Portland and Fitzwilliam had their own political friends in Ireland, and it was naturally assumed that these friends and their policy would now predominate in Irish affairs. This was the belief of the Whig leaders in England. It was also the belief in Ireland, whence letter after letter was sent to members of the English Government, declaring that the old supporters of Pitt were threatened with political extinction; that the Ponsonbys were about to be the arbitrators of Irish affairs; that the old system under which the Irish Parliament had been so easily managed was about to be ruined.

All this occurred while Lord Westmorland was still Lord Lieutenant. Fitzwilliam made no secret of the fact that he had been designated for that office, and he began at once to lay the foundation of his future administration. This was was done without the smallest concealment. His first offer was that of the Chief Secretaryship to Thomas Grenville, the brother of Pitt's most intimate colleague, Lord Grenville, and it was accepted, though at a later period Grenville reconsidered his intention. Fitzwilliam also put himself in immediate

connection with Grattan and the two Ponsonby brothers. In August he wrote to Grattan, stating that, though not yet appointed, there was great probability that he would soon be in office, and added: Upon entering upon the administration of the affairs in Ireland, I shall look to the system of the Duke of Portland as the model by which I shall regulate the general line of my conduct. The chief object of my attempts will be to purify, as far as circumstances and prudence will permit, the principles of government, in the hopes of thereby restoring it that tone and spirit which so happily prevailed formerly. . . . It is, sir, to you and to your friends the Ponsonbys that I look for assistance. Without the hope, which I am vain enough to entertain, of that assistance I should decline engaging in so hopeless a task as the government of Ireland;' and he proceeded to express his hope that Grattan would accept a direct and avowed connection with the Castle.

Grattan, however, had resolved not to take office, though he was prepared to support cordially a government on the lines of the policy of Lord Fitzwilliam. At the express desire of the Duke of Portland, George Ponsonby came over from Ireland to consult upon the arrangements for the new administration, and Grattan either accompanied or immediately followed him. Grattan, the Ponsonbys, and Lord Fitzwilliam shortly after dined with Pitt and the Grenvilles at the house of the Duke of Portland, in order to exchange views on the subject, and at Pitt's invitation Grattan alone visited Pitt, in order to have an opportunity of conversing with him confidentially on the subject of an arrangement in Ireland.'1 He brought back from this interview a clear conviction that the Catholic question would certainly be carried in the coming

1 Grattan's Life, iv. 175.

PROPOSED REMOVAL OF FITZGIBBON

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administration, though not on the initiative of the ministers. As his son reports, he said that Pitt's very words in describing his intentions on this question were 'not to bring it forward as a Government measure, but if Government were pressed to yield to it.''

Grattan does not appear to have contemplated any complete change of men in Ireland, and he strongly urged, apparently in opposition to Ponsonby, that the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Parnell, should be continued in office; but some changes, he clearly saw, were necessary, the principal one being that Fitzgibbon should cease to be Chancellor. Nothing could be more hopeless or more humiliating than the position of a Lord Lieutenant, surrounded by men in office who were violently opposed to his policy, and at the same time deprived of the power of removing them. As Burke wrote: It is not to know Ireland to say that what is called Opposition is what will give trouble to a real Viceroy. His embarrassments are upon the part of those who ought to be the supports of English Government, but who have formed themselves into a cabal to destroy the King's authority.' It was already evident from the correspondence from Ireland that the members of Lord Westmorland's Government looked on the advent of Lord Fitzwilliam with extreme alarm and with bitter hostility, and it was quite certain that Fitzgibbon would be an implacable opponent of any Reform Bill on the lines of that with which Ponsonby had specially identified himself, and of the admission of Catholics to Parliament which Ponsonby had very recently declared to be a political necessity. According to the Whig view, the management of Ireland had been offered without reservation to them as one of the terms of the coalition. The right of appointing to offices in Ireland naturally belonged to the Lord 1 Grattan's Life, iv. 177.

Lieutenant and the Home Secretary, and they had also the right of removing and pensioning off officials who were opposed to their policy. Without this power, the offer which had been made to them would be wholly futile and the management of Ireland would be impossible.

A quarrel soon broke out in England which threatened to put an end to the Coalition. Portland complained that the appointment of Fitzwilliam seemed indefinitely adjourned, and that when the Whig leaders consented that it should not take place till a vacancy had been found for Lord Westmorland, they assumed that Pitt would take some steps to secure that end. Pitt, on the other hand, was evidently alarmed by the reports from Ireland, which were intended to persuade him that the Ponsonbys would attain an overwhelming power, and that a new system of men and measures would take place. That something of the kind must have followed the promotion to the first place in the Irish Government, in a time of extreme and feverish popular excitement, of a nobleman who was perfectly well known to be in favour of parliamentary reform and Catholic Emancipation, and who had declared his intention of relying chiefly on the Irish politicians who were specially identified with these measures, was indeed sufficiently evident, but it does not appear to have been foreseen by Pitt, or at least he had begun to fear that it was likely to be carried to a point much beyond what he had anticipated. He most positively and emphatically declared that he would not consent to the removal of Fitzgibbon. 'I am confirmed,' Pitt wrote to Windham, in the impossibility either of consenting to the Chancellor's removal or of leaving either him or any of the supporters of the Government exposed to the risk of a new system.' 'Besides the impossibility of sacrificing any supporters of Government and exposing them to the risk of a new system, I ought to add that the very idea

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of a new system (as far as I understand what is meant by that term), and especially one formed without previous communication or concert with the rest of the King's servants here or with the friends of Government in Ireland, is in itself what I feel it, utterly impossible to accede to.'

In a memorandum which he drew up, but apparently only for his own use, he states that the best thing that could happen would be that Fitzwilliam should not go to Ireland, but if he did go, it must be on the understanding that 'all idea of a new system of measures or of new principles of government in Ireland, as well as of any separate and exclusive right to conduct the departments of Ireland differently from any other in the King's service, must be disclaimed and relinquished,' and that 'complete security must be given that Lord Fitzgibbon and all the supporters of Government shall not be displaced on the change, nor while they continue to act fairly in the support of such a system as shall be approved in England.' As Burke at this time wrote, Portland and Fitzwilliam had undoubtedly believed that a very large discretion was committed to them in the administration of Ireland, and they had proceeded as if there was no controversy whatever on the subject, while it seems Mr. Pitt had no thought at all of a change in the Irish Government, or if he had, it was dependent on Lord Westmorland's sense of the fitness of some other office to accommodate him on his resignation.'1

After long disputes extending over some weeks the quarrel was at last appeased. Lord Westmorland was made Master of the Horse, and Lord Fitzwilliam became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, where he arrived on January 4,

So Grattan wrote (Oct. 27, 1794) to a private friend: Mr. Pitt don't agree to those extensive powers which we were taught to believe the Duke of Portland had. However, I should not be surprised if it were settled well at last and that Lord Fitzwilliam went over; nor yet would the contrary surprise me. This week will decide.' Grattan's Life, iv. 179.

VOL. I.

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