as soon as possible. I still
think your preamble will at last be consented to: but a pressing
despatch, to be used or not, as occasion requires, can do no
harm.

Believe me,
My dearest brother,
Most affectionately and sincerely yours,
W. W. G.

1783.

The Renunciation Bill--The Fall of the Shelburne Administration--The
Cabinet Interregnum--The Coalition Ministry--Resignation of Lord Temple.

The impediments and delays Mr. Grenville had to encounter in his
negotiations with Ministers, are sufficiently detailed in the preceding
correspondence. They appear to have originated chiefly with Lord
Shelburne, who, in the line of conduct he pursued on this occasion,
betrayed either a singular indifference to the state of Ireland, or an
inexcusable ignorance of it. For the latter, indeed, he had no
reasonable excuse, since the suspense of the public mind, and the
growing discontents of the people, were constantly pressed upon his
attention by Lord Temple and Mr. Grenville. There certainly was no
shadow of pretence for not thoroughly understanding the whole merits of
the question at issue between the two kingdoms, and still less for not
setting it at rest at once, as the Ministry did at last, and must have
intended to do in some shape all throughout. Yet it was not until the
beginning of January, 1783, after nearly six weeks of incessant
representations and harassing interviews with Lord Shelburne, Pitt and
Townshend, that the mission of the Irish Secretary assumed a definite
shape, and that something like a distinct hope was held out of its being
brought, at last, to a satisfactory conclusion.

Lord Shelburne appears to have been desirous of postponing the Irish
difficulty until after he should have succeeded in securing the peace,
for which he was then treating with France. He thought that a measure,
however just and indispensable in itself, emanating from a strong
Government, would be received as a graceful concession, while the same
measure, granted by a Government which had been described early in the
preceding December by Lord Mornington (afterwards Marquis of Wellesley)
as subsisting solely on the divisions of its enemies, might seem to be
wrung from the embarrassments of the Administration. This shuffling
policy, and want of magnanimity in the Minister--this coquetting with
extremities, in the forlorn hope of extracting from them some advantage
for a sinking Government, pervaded t