ville thought it highly improbable that the Irish Ambassadors, as they were called, would venture to present the Address in the improved state of the King's health, or that His Royal Highness would be advised to accept it. They did present it notwithstanding, and their reception is thus reported by Mr. Grenville :

Your Ambassadors are arrived; and presented their Address yesterday evening to the Prince. The answer which, as I understand, he gave them, was, that he was highly gratified with the expressions of loyalty to the King, which the Address contained; but that with respect to the rest he could not give them an answer before Tuesday, on which day he desired to see them again. I take it for granted, he will then say, that the King being recovered, all consideration of a Regency is out of the question.

People in general here do not seem disposed to consider this transaction in any other than a ludicrous manner, and as the most absurd and ridiculous farce. It is impossible to describe how much and how universally their Excellencies are laughed at. One of them came into an assembly last night, and was received with a general roar of laughter. I did not think they would have been so foolish as to present it. The Prince and his friends must have been a good deal embarrassed what answer to give them; and I do not think they have succeeded remarkably well, if the account of the answer, such as I have stated it, is true.

It was on the day after the Princes' interview that Mr. Pitt had his first audience of the King since his illness; no Minister, except the Chancellor, having hitherto been admitted to see His Majesty, on account of the jealousies

with which every step they took throughout this painful interval was watched and turned to account.

MR. W. W. GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.

MY DEAR BROther,

Whitehall, Feb. 24th, 1789.

Pitt has just shown me a letter which he received last night from the King, written in His Majesty's own hand, couched in the warmest terms, thanking him for his unshaken attachment to his interests, and desiring to see him this morning. He went accordingly to Kew, and was with the King above an hour. He says that there was not the smallest trace or appearance of any disorder; that the King's manner was unusually composed and dignified, but that there was no other difference. whatever from what he had been used to see. The King spoke of his disorder as of a thing past, and which had left no other impression on his mind than that of gratitude for his recovery, and a sense of what he owed to those who had stood by him. He spoke of these in such a manner as brought tears into his eyes; but even with that degree of affection of mind, there was not the least appearance of disorder.

After Pitt had left His Majesty, he conversed with Willis, who told him that he now thought the King quite well; that he could not perceive the least trace remaining of his disorder. Under these circumstances, the more I consider our actual situation and what seems due to the King's feelings, the more I am persuaded of that opinion, to which I think our friends begin in general to lean, that the King's resumption of his authority must be done purely by his own act, and that it is impossible to hear of any examination of physicians.

The two Princes were at Kew yesterday, and saw the King, in the Queen's apartment. She was present the whole time, a precaution for which, God knows, there was but too much

reason. They kept him waiting a considerable time before they arrived; and after they left him, drove immediately to Mrs. Armstead's, in Park Street, in hopes of finding Fox there, to give him an account of what had passed. He not being in town, they amused themselves yesterday evening with spreading about a report that the King was still out of his mind, and in quoting phrases of his to which they gave that turn. It is certainly a decent and becoming thing, that when all the King's physicians, all his attendants, and his two principal Ministers, agree in pronouncing him well, his two sons should deny it. And the reflection that the Prince of Wales was to have had the Government and the Duke of York the command of the army during his illness, makes this representation of his actual state, when coming from them, more peculiarly proper and edifying. I bless God it is yet some time before these matured and ripened virtues will be visited upon us in the form of a Government.

Believe me ever most affectionately yours,

W. W. G.

Acting on the carte blanche which he had asked, and which had been freely accorded to him, respecting dismissals, appointments, and creations, Lord Buckingham proceeded at once to redress the balance of power in Ireland, by dismissing from their offices the persons who had recently opposed the conduct of the Government on the Regency question. A similar course had been pursued in England on His Majesty's recovery. Mr. Grenville mentions specially "the justice which had been executed on Lord Lothian" in this way, the King taking his troop from him, and sending him to join another in Ireland. "The joke current here," says Mr. Grenville, "is, that the Irish Ambassadors came over here to Lothian's hotel, and

In

that the King sends Lothian to return the visit." Ireland the disaffection had been more dangerous and extensive, and demanded more severe measures.

The moment it was known that the King was recovered, a negotiation was opened with the Government through Mr. Fitzgibbon, then Attorney-General, by the principal members of the Lords and Commons who had supported the Address, tendering their submission, and asking for an amnesty. It has been stated in some publications referring to these proceedings, that the negotiations were opened by Government; but Lord Buckingham's official despatch, dated the 23rd of March, not only shows that statement to be erroneous, but establishes the fact that Lord Buckingham peremptorily refused to entertain the negotiation until he should have received a positive assurance that a certain defensive and hostile agreement, into which those gentlemen had entered, was to be considered as abandoned. This agreement, or association, was called the Round Robin (although not really a round robin, being merely a declaration, followed in the usual way by the signatures of the subscribers), pledging those who attached their names to it to "stand by each other" (to use the phrase by which Mr. Beresford described it) in the event of their offices or pensions being taken from them, and to oppose any Administration that should resort to such a proceeding.

Finding Lord Buckingham immoveable upon the condition he stipulated for, Lords Shannon, Loftus, Clifden, and many others, authorized the Attorney-General to declare the association at an end, adding that they

desired to be represented to His Majesty as anxious to support his Government, and to endeavour to remove by their future conduct all unfavourable impressions from his mind. In the wise exercise of the discretion reposed in him, Lord Buckingham accepted this voluntary tender of allegiance, and permitted the gentlemen who had made it to retain their offices. The Duke of Leinster, who had been only recently appointed to the Rolls, and Mr. Ponsonby, who held the situation of Postmaster-General, refusing to give the required undertaking, aggravated, in the case of the latter, by a declaration that he would not enter into any communication with Lord Buckingham, were at once dismissed from their offices. This dismissal was followed by that of a few others of less note.

These energetic measures were founded, not only on the dangerous resistance these gentlemen had carried to extremity, at a period of anxious suspense and universal excitement, against the Government, but upon a knowledge of the existence of an organized combination they had embarked in with the English Opposition to supersede the authority of the Sovereign in the person of the Regent. In order the more effectually to accomplish their objects, they had seized upon every act of the Administration, and held it up to obloquy. A pension which had been granted to Mr. Orde, and the reversion of Lord Clanbrassil's office which had been conferred on Mr. Grenville, afforded them a pretext for charging the Government with corruption and profligacy. They opened their impeachment at the very beginning of the session, in February, defeated the motion for adjournment, carried their Address