1785.

THE BREACH BETWEEN THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM AND MR. THOMAS

GRENVILLE.

MR. PITT'S Government was now reaping all the advantages of peace and security. The lull that followed the termination of the American War and the dispersion of the Coalition, enabled the Minister to consolidate his power and develop his plans. Lord North, who had the misfortune not long afterwards to lose his eyesight, was receding from the arena on which he had acted so remarkable a part during the preceding fourteen years; and Mr. Fox and his adherents, returning again to their own natural orbit, were vindicating their integrity and consistency in the maintenance of a constitutional Opposition. Faction, weakened and dismembered, had fallen before the genius of Mr. Pitt.

The principal measure in the Cabinet in 1785 was a Bill for the reform of the representation in Parliament, by which Mr. Pitt proposed to transfer the franchises of thirty-six boroughs to counties and unrepresented towns. A clause in this Bill, for giving pecuniary compensation

to the disfranchised boroughs, was fatal to its reception. Mr. Fox laid down the maxim, that the franchise was not a property, but a trust: the House adopted that view of the question, and the Bill was lost. But Mr. Pitt, nevertheless, discharged his pledge to the public by thus initiating the principle of parliamentary reform.

The Marquis of Buckingham still continued a passive spectator of public events, and the correspondence of this period possesses consequently little political interest. We learn by a letter from his brother, Mr. W. W. Grenville, that he had placed his proxy in the hands of Lord Camelford, who was so embarrassed by the responsibility, that he took counsel with Lord Sydney and Mr. Grenville as to the course he should follow in reference to a particular vote. Mr. Grenville, exercising his usual good sense and practical judgment, strongly recommended his Lordship to withdraw his proxy altogether, rather than to have it exposed to the chance of compromising his opinions.

The unhappy difference between the Marquis of Buckingham and his brother, Mr. Thomas Grenville, was not yet adjusted; and time seems only to have widened a breach which both deplored, and were equally anxious to remove. The proud feelings of the Marquis, wounded by the injustice with which he conceived he had been treated, were peculiarly sensitive to every act on the part of his friends that departed in the slightest degree from the line he had marked out for himself. Perhaps he expected from them more in this respect than the obligations of public life could be reasonably expected

to concede; in this instance, at least, he appears to have exaggerated into a personal wrong a vote which was given on pure and independent grounds, without a suspicion that it was open to so injurious an interpretation. Mr. Thomas Grenville's letter on this painful subject is an honourable testimony alike to his integrity and his affection.

MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF
BUCKINGHAM.

MY DEAR BROTHER,

St. James's Street, Feb. 4th, 1785.

Anything that comes from you with the least prospect of bringing back to me those sentiments of affection which, in spite of any political differences, it has always been my first wish to keep alive between us; any intimation of your looking for a brother in one who has never ceased to be so to you; I cannot but be eager to express the pleasure and satisfaction I feel in receiving from you. And if I did not feel shocked and wounded by those expressions which ascribe to my vote motives so foreign to my nature, that I can scarce bear to read or repeat them, my hopes of living with you in the affectionate intercourse of a brother would have kept my attention to that pleasing prospect only, and would have shut my lips upon every past subject of difference. Can I really have to think that you are serious in considering me as having struck at your honour and your life by any vote that I have given? That such an expression can have come from you after a year's reflection, wounds me more than anything that could be said in the first moments of anger; and it is not against such a charge that I can argue to defend myself.

I cannot say with how much concern it is, that I have felt myself obliged to allude to anything that has passed, nor could

I have been forced now to do it, was it not that to have said nothing upon a charge so cruel might have looked like acquiescing in the justice of it: of that vote I have always said, and God knows, always truly said, that I made in it no personal attack, felt in it nothing hostile to you, and regretted in it only the misrepresentation and misconception of others. I have said more, and still say, that the misunderstanding of that vote is so grievous to me, that, blameless as my motives were, I would not have given it, if I had thought it liable to the misrepresentations that have been made of it; yet, God knows, I thought it could be mistaken only by those who did not know me.

I return with pleasure, my dear brother, to that part of your note, in which I hope I find again the prospect of that near affectionate relation, the renewal of which on your part, my mind has ever been anxious for, and ever eager to bring about, from the first moment that political differences had separated us; for, upon political subjects, my mind receives no impression that can stop in it the feelings of relationship, kindness, and affection, all of which I will hope, my dearest brother, the latter words of your note again open the way to a way in which I cannot too often repeat, how gladly and happily I should go forward in.

Ever your very affectionate brother,

THOMAS GRENVILLE.

The following passage, in the Marquis of Buckingham's hand-writing, apparently cut out of a former letter to which the above is the reply, seems to contain the observations from which Mr. Thomas Grenville extracted the hope of reconciliation. It is enclosed in his letter as if it had been returned to the writer.

When you joined in the vote which impeached my honour, and possibly my life, you forgot the feelings of a brother, and dissolved the ties between us. I loathe the looking back, still less do I mean to reproach: my heart is still alive to those feelings which nature and religion dictate to me.

I have no false pride, and, therefore, have no conditions to propose to you. All that I look for is a brother; but in that word I comprehend all the sentiments of affection which I feel I discharged faithfully towards you till the moment of our separation. Consult your feelings, and God direct them.

In the next letter, Mr. W. W. Grenville communicates a scrap of political gossip to his brother.

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

MY DEAR BROTHER,

Oakley, Sunday, August 9th, 1785.

Having just heard a most curious piece of news, I take the first moment of acquainting you with it, though, perhaps, you will have been informed of it through some other channel. It is no less than a sudden resolution taken by Wyndham of resigning his office, in consequence of an inflammatory fever with which he was seized at Oxford, on his way back to Dublin. Lord Northington's friends in London have undertaken very kindly to supply his loss, and have offered his secretaryship to Tom Pelham, who has accepted, and waits only for the form of being appointed by Lord Northington to the situation of his confidential Minister and friend.

Their Irish peers are Clements, Matthew, Jonson, Pomeroy, and Mr. Hutchinson; together with Deland, Pennant, and Pennington.

The wags say that this is the second voyage to the North