from it, Lord Gower, coming out of his own cabinet, declares that one principal cause of his resignation was his not being able to prevail on the present minister to give any sort of application to this business.  Even on the late meeting of Parliament, nothing determinate could be drawn from him, or from any of his associates, until you had actually passed the short money bill,—­which measure they flattered themselves, and assured others, you would never come up to.  Disappointed in their expectation at [of?] seeing the siege raised, they surrendered at discretion.

Judge, my dear Sir, of our surprise at finding your censure directed against those whose only crime was in accusing the ministers of not having prevented your demands by our graces, of not having given you the natural advantages of your country in the most ample, the most early, and the most liberal manner, and for not having given away authority in such a manner as to insure friendship.  That you should make the panegyric of the ministers is what I expected; because, in praising their bounty, you paid a just compliment to your own force.  But that you should rail at us, either individually or collectively, is what I can scarcely think a natural proceeding.  I can easily conceive that gentlemen might grow frightened at what they had done,—­that they might imagine they had undertaken a business above their direction,—­that, having obtained a state of independence for their country, they meant to take the deserted helm into their own hands, and supply by their very real abilities the total inefficacy of the nominal government.  All these might be real, and might be very justifiable motives for their reconciling themselves cordially to the present court system.  But I do not so well discover the reasons that could induce them, at the first feeble dawning of life in this country, to do all in their power to cast a cloud over it, and to prevent the least hope of our effecting the necessary reformations which are aimed at in our Constitution and in our national economy.

But, it seems, I was silent at the passing the resolutions.  Why, what had I to say?  If I had thought them too much, I should have been accused of an endeavor to inflame England.  If I should represent them as too little, I should have been charged with a design of fomenting the discontents of Ireland into actual rebellion.  The Treasury bench represented that the affair was a matter of state:  they represented it truly.  I therefore only asked whether they knew these propositions to be such as would satisfy Ireland; for if they were so, they would satisfy me.  This did not indicate that I thought them too ample.  In this our silence (however dishonorable to Parliament) there was one advantage,—­that the whole passed, as far as it is gone, with complete unanimity, and so quickly that there was no time left to excite any opposition to it out of doors.  In the West India business, reasoning on what had lately passed