honour him by an interview, much more could be done, and more
explained, than by letter, and he should be happy to see him.

LORD GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.

Dropmore, Dec. 2, 1821.

The two facts which your two letters have successively communicated
have in the first instance highly delighted, and in the second
proportionably dispirited me. Wellesley's appointment I verily
believe to be the best that could be made. But what can I say of
that of his secretary?--a man who may, for what I know, have
virtues and talents of which it never fell in my way to hear a
word, but who is known to the public here, and in Ireland, by
nothing but the having made in the Catholic debates in the very
last year, the most absurd speech and motion that could have come
from the lips of Duigenan himself.

If one could laugh on such a subject, and when such interests are
at stake, what can exceed the ridicule of thus systematically
coupling together a friend and an enemy to toleration, like fat
and lean rabbits, or the man and his wife in a Dutch toy, or like
fifty other absurdities made to be laughed at, but certainly never
before introduced into politics as fixed and fundamental systems
for the conduct of the most difficult and dangerous crisis of a
country.

What is to result from this disheartening folly? Is Wellesley a
man likely to submit, like some of his predecessors, to be made a
cypher in his Government? Is Plunket disposed to see the whole
detail of daily business, and the whole character and temper of
the Secretary's office fall back into the old channels; and that
after the nomination of Grant, and his conduct since he went to
Ireland, had both been among the principal inducements to him to
look at a situation so far beneath his just pretensions? And what,
I might ask, would be Wellesley's own situation between the
Secretary at home from whom he receives orders, and the Secretary
at Dublin to whom he is to give orders, if I did not believe that
with all his failings he possesses a high and independent spirit,
which will lead him to assert himself decisively in the very first
moment of the counteraction, which is thus studiously and
systematically provided to embarrass him in all his operations.

But above all, what a picture does it present of the councils to