e House of Commons, etc. I
mean to speak with no disrespect of Lord Camden; I never heard
anything but to his honour; but I maintain under the present
circumstances the best soldier would make the best
Lord-Lieutenant; one on whom no Junto there would presume to
fling their shackles, and one who would cut them short if they
presumed to talk of what they did not understand. With this
idea, I confess, Ld Cornwallis naturally occurs to me. Next to
this, but not so efficacious, would be sending some one equal to
the military duties, freed from all control, saving that, for
form's sake, good sense would acquiesce under to [_sic_] the
King's Deputy. But I cannot doubt but a deeper change would be
most advisable. The disaffected to our Government (and I fear it
is too general) may perhaps have their degrees and divisions of
animosity against it, and some possibly may be changed by a
change of men more than by a professed change of measures, which
perhaps they think little about. I know they are taught to
believe a particular set of men are their enemies; in truth I
question if, in tyrannising over and thwarting the Castle, and
talking so injudiciously, they ought to be considered as our
friends....

Thus the man to whom in 1795 Earl Fitzwilliam poured forth his
grievances against Pitt, now advised him to end the mischievous dualism
at Dublin, which enabled Lords Justices and the Speaker of the Irish
House of Commons to paralyse the Executive. There, as at Berlin,
advisers who had great influence but no official responsibility, often
intervened with disastrous results; and not until Stein took the tiller
after Tilsit did the Prussian ship of State pursue a straight course. At
Dublin the crisis of 1798 revealed the weakness of the Irish Executive,
and naturally led to a complete break with the past.[533]

* * * * *

Amidst the mass of Pitt's papers relating to Ireland there is no sign of
his intention to press on an Act of Union before the middle of the
month of June 1798, that is, in the midst of the Rebellion. The first
reference to it occurs in a memorandum endorsed by Pitt "received June
19, 1798," and obviously drawn up by Camden a few days before he
resigned the Viceroyalty in favour of Cornwallis. Pitt's letter of
inquiry is missing. Camden's reply is too long for quotation, but may be
thus summari