approbation.

I most entirely agree in the utter impossibility of either yourself
or Wellesley, or any other supporter of the Catholic Bill, bringing
forward any such proposition as this, or even acquiescing in it,
except under an express and positive declaration that you do so
only as seeing in it an advance, _however small_, towards the final
and total accomplishment of that which can alone satisfy your own
duty and opinion on this subject.

How can Lord Londonderry or any of his colleagues think that any of
those who were turned out in 1807, precisely because they would not
pledge themselves to any truce or cessation of this question short
of its total and final accomplishment, would now lend themselves to
such a measure for the sake of obtaining for the Catholics benefits
so small that it is even doubtful (as I explained to Charles this
morning, according to my view of the subject,) whether they or
their opponents would gain most by thus varying the state of the
question?

I forget which bishop it was that was foolish enough to express his
hope that the present rejection of the Bill would finally set the
question at rest. But I well remember that I noticed this
nonsensical expectation in the course of what I said, and assured
him that it neither ought to have, _nor would have_, that effect.

And indeed if I, and half or all the supporters of the Bill, had
thought differently, and were inclined to lend ourselves to such a
pledge, how could any or all of us answer for the Catholics
themselves, or bind ourselves, if they stirred the question in
opposition to our pledges, that we would then vote against our
declared opinions?

All this, in my judgment, only shows that Lord Londonderry is, as
he may well be, most uneasy in his situation, as resulting from the
present strange and most anomalous state of this business, which he
ought to have foreseen, but did not, as at least a possible event,
when he agreed to form a Government in which the one most important
feature in the whole political interests of the country was not to
be considered as a ministerial question.

"You have what I advise;" but pray do not forget that, on this
subject above all others, Plunket is entitled, not to _know_, but
almost to _direct_ your course.

GRENVILLE.

The Queen put in a form