STATE PAPERS. 



259 



pressed to hi ui my conviction, that 

 Ireland could neitlier be happily 

 settled, nor finnly united to Great 

 Britain, without a concurrent set- 

 tlement of the claims of his Ma- 

 jesty's Roman Catholic subjects. 

 The o|}inions which I declared to 

 Mr. Pitt, at that time, respecting 

 the substance of those claims, were 

 precisely similar to those which 1 

 have stated in the House of Lords 

 during the present session of par- 

 liament. 



It is not necessary to enter upon 

 any review of the transactions 

 which passed during my absence 

 in India, with relation to Ireland, 

 or to the claims of the Roman Ca- 

 tholics. 



I arrived from India in the month 

 of January, 1806 ; and after one 

 short interview with Mr. Pitt, I 

 assisted in performing the last sad 

 office of following his remains to 

 the grave. 



You are aware, that long before 

 that period of time, the " high 

 considerations" to which you refer, 

 had been fixed in full force; that 

 no attempt to change those senti- 

 ments could have been made with 

 any prospect of success ; and that 

 the result, even of a successful pro- 

 ceeding in parliament, would have 

 tended only to produce the most 

 dreadful extremity of confusion. 



You must remember, that I have 

 always lamented (as serious na- 

 tional calamities, menacing the 

 constitution of the monarchy) the 

 refierence, which has necessarily 

 been made to the existence of those 

 personal sentiments, and the causes 

 which have occasioned that neces- 

 sity. 



With the warmest sentiments 

 of personal veneration, attachment, 

 and gratitude, my opinion has al- 



ways been, that the duty of loy- 

 alty and affection towards a British 

 sovereign does not consist in sub- 

 missive obedience, even to the ho- 

 nest prejudices or errors of the 

 royal mind, but rather in respect- 

 ful endeavours to remove those 

 prejudices and errors, by free ad- 

 vice in council, and by temperate 

 remonstrance in Parliament. 



But the time for such endea- 

 vours had passed ; and I submitted 

 reluctantly, not to my sense of the 

 genuine duty of a faithful coun- 

 sellor towards his sovereign, but to 

 the painful, and, byme, irreversible 

 necessity of the case. 



This is a subject of the utmost, 

 of the most perilous delicacy : — 

 your letter has opened it : — I will 

 pursue it no further than to assure 

 you, that when, on the 31st of 

 January, I declared in the House 

 of Lords, my sentiments respecting 

 the Roman Catholic claims, the 

 necessity which had occasioned my 

 silence appeared to me to have en- 

 tirely ceased. 



The second point of your expla- 

 natory letter refers to the manage- 

 ment of the war in the Peninsula. 



Your suggestions are necessarily 

 indistinct, with regard to the addi- 

 tional means (which have occurred 

 since my resignation), of extending 

 our military efforts in that quarter : 

 I think I can colleet even from 

 your hints, that although those 

 means are extraneous, the proba- 

 bility of their existence might have 

 been foreseen, as the natural re- 

 sult of instructions which were in 

 progress of execution previously to 

 my resignation. 



But my objection to the system 

 pursued in the Peninsula, at the 

 time of my resignation, was ap- 

 plied to the whole frame and fabric 



of 



