As these proceedings got out of doors, Glasgow and Manchester, and, I think, Liverpool, began to move, but in a manner much more slow and languid than formerly.  Nothing, in my opinion, would have been less difficult than entirely to have overborne their opposition.  The London West India trade was, as on the former occasion, so on this, perfectly liberal and perfectly quiet; and there is abroad so much respect for the united wisdom of the House, when supposed to act upon a fair view of a political situation, that I scarcely ever remember any considerable uneasiness out of doors, when the most active members, and those of most property and consideration in the minority, have joined themselves to the administration.  Many factious people in the towns I mentioned began, indeed, to revile Lord North, and to reproach his neutrality as treacherous and ungrateful to those who had so heartily and so warmly entered into all his views with regard to America.  That noble lord, whose decided character it is to give way to the latest and nearest pressure, without any sort of regard to distant consequences of any kind, thought fit to appear, on this signification of the pleasure of those his worthy friends and partisans, and, putting himself at the head of the posse scaccarii, wholly regardless of the dignity and consistency of our miserable House, drove the propositions entirely out of doors by a majority newly summoned to duty.

In order to atone to Ireland for this gratification to Manchester, he graciously permitted, or rather forwarded, two bills,—­that for encouraging the growth of tobacco, and that for giving a bounty on exportation of hemp from Ireland.  They were brought in by two very worthy members, and on good principles; but I was sorry to see them, and, after expressing my doubts of their propriety, left the House.  Little also [else?] was said upon them.  My objections were two:  the first, that the cultivation of those weeds (if one of them could be at all cultivated to profit) was adverse to the introduction of a good course of agriculture; the other, that the encouragement given to them tended to establish that mischievous policy of considering Ireland as a country of staple, and a producer of raw materials.

When the rejection of the first propositions and the acceptance of the last had jointly, as it was natural, raised a very strong discontent in Ireland, Lord Rockingham, who frequently said that there never seemed a more opportune time for the relief of Ireland than that moment when Lord North had rejected all rational propositions for its relief, without consulting, I believe, any one living, did what he is not often very willing to do; but he thought this an occasion of magnitude enough to justify an extraordinary step.  He went into the closet, and made a strong representation on the matter to the king, which was not ill received, and I believe produced good effects.  He then made the motion in the House of Lords which you may recollect;