ssion of friendship to you, which heightened its relish, and made
it worthy of a reception in manly minds. But as for the awkward and
nauseous parade of debate without opposition, the flimsy device of
tricking out necessity and disguising it in the habit of choice, the
shallow stratagem of defending by argument, what all the world must
perceive is yielded to force,--these are a sort of acts of friendship
which I am sorry that any of my countrymen should require of their real
friends. They are things not _to my taste_; and if they are looked upon
as tests of friendship, I desire for one that I may be considered as an
enemy.

What party purpose did my conduct answer at that time? I acted with Lord
N. I went to all the ministerial meetings,--and he and his associates in
office will do me the justice to say, that, aiming at the concord of the
empire, I made it my business to give his concessions all the value of
which they were capable, whilst some of those who were covered with his
favors derogated from them, treated them with contempt, and openly
threatened to oppose them. If I had acted with my dearest and most
valued friends, if I had acted with the Marquis of Rockingham or the
Duke of Richmond, in that situation, I could not have attended more to
their honor, or endeavored more earnestly to give efficacy to the
measures I had taken in common with them. The return which I, and all
who acted as I did, have met with from him, does not make me repent the
conduct which I then held.

As to the rest of the gentlemen with whom I have the honor to act, they
did not then, or at any other time, make a party affair of Irish
politics. That matter was always taken up without concert; but, in
general, from the operation of our known liberal principles in
government, in commerce, in religion, in everything, it was taken up
favorably for Ireland. Where some local interests bore hard upon the
members, they acted on the sense of their constituents, upon ideas
which, though I do not always follow, I cannot blame. However, two or
three persons, high in opposition, and high in public esteem, ran great
risks in their boroughs on that occasion. But all this was without any
particular plan. I need not say, that Ireland was in that affair much
obliged to the liberal mind and enlarged understanding of Charles Fox,
to Mr. Thomas Townshend, to Lord Midleton, and others. On reviewing that
affair, which gave rise to all the subsequent manoeuvres, I