1801. PROMISE OF RELIEF TO THE CATHOLIC PARTY. 289

No sooner was the work done, than they clamoured for their reward. So the peerages were created; the places were conferred; and the money bribes were paid. But Catholic Emancipation was not yet granted. Indeed, no time had been fixed; and the Catholics were far from any inclination to embarrass the Government, by pressing for the settlement of their claims. Something had been said at the Cabinet about waiting for a time of peace. But the war might last until the friends of religious liberty were no longer in a condition to perform their promise. And no reason had been given, why a time of peace should be more convenient than a time of war, for entertaining the question. Lord Grenville was of opinion, that there could be no more fitting time to promote domestic harmony and to do an act of justice and grace to the majority of the Irish people, than when England was wrestling with a foreign foe, and when Ireland was threatened with invasion. The Viceroy urged, that the question could not be postponed, and that, if it was not soon brought forward by the Government, it would be taken up by the Opposition.

Proposed

Catholic relief.

Mr. Pitt yielded to these arguments; and, immediately after the Act of Union had been passed, the principal members of the measures for Government prepared the outline of a measure, or of a series of measures, worthy the great and generous minds by which they were conceived. The sacramental test was to be abolished; and, in its stead, was to be substituted a political declaration, applicable to members of Parliament, office-bearers, ministers of religion of every denomination, and teachers of schools. A provision for the Catholic clergy, with the view of rendering them, to use the words of Grenville, more respectable in station; more independent of their flocks; and better disposed to the support of the established

6

290

PROPOSED MEASURES OF THE CABINET. CH. XL.

Government,' formed part of the plan. The tithe system, the sorest of the practical grievances of which the Irish Catholics complained, was to be adjusted in such a manner as to render it less oppressive to the great bulk of the people, Protestant as well as Catholic, who dissented from the Establishment. The details of this great scheme of pacification and Union were never drawn out. But such were the conceptions of Pitt and Grenville.* In the autumn of 1800, Lord Castlereagh was again in attendance on the Cabinet, to aid them by his particular information in framing the Irish measures, which were to be submitted to Parliament in the ensuing session. Thus far the business had proceeded; and the two statesmen, intent on the elaboration of their plan, saw no danger from any quarter, except possibly from the old party of Protestant ascendency on either side of the Channel. At length, it was thought time to assemble the Cabinet, in order that the Irish measures might be finally determined. And, on the 25th of September, Pitt wrote to the Chancellor, who was at Weymouth, informing him of the project in contemplation; referring him to some explanatory papers which he was to receive from Lord Grenville; and requesting his attendance in London, for the meeting of the Cabinet, on an early day.

The Cabinet assembled.

Loughborough's

fidence.

The King was at Weymouth when Lord Loughborough received this letter; and, though breach of con- not in official attendance on His Majesty, the Chancellor appears to have cultivated the opportunity thus offered, to ingratiate himself with the King. He was now fully informed of the King's views on the Catholic question; and he was careful not to repeat the mistake which he had made in 1795; when, from ignorance of the strong bias of

* Lord Grenville to Marquis of Buckingham, Feb. 2, 1801.

Courts and Cabinets of George the Third, vol. iii. p. 128.

1801.

LOUGHBOROUGH'S FLATTERY OF THE KING. 291

the royal mind, he had answered the written questions which the King put to him on the Coronation Oath, in a manner far from agreeable to his client's wishes.* The crafty and supple lawyer knew that the surest road to His Majesty's favour was by flattering his prejudices; and as he desired above all things to recommend himself to the King, he was ready to follow that road whenever an opening should present itself. Fortune seemed to have favoured his highest hopes, when he received, at a moment when none other of the ministers was near the King's person, the announcement of the measure which had been concerted between the Prime Minister and the foremost of his colleagues. He had it now in his power to give the most signal proof of devotion to his royal master, by revealing the counsels of the head of the Government, and by defeating his policy. Loughborough himself admitted, that he showed Pitt's letter to the King. And there can be no doubt, that the whole plan communicated to him by Pitt and Grenville was by him communicated to His Majesty.†

and Castlereagh.

The Lord Chancellor having thus secured, as he supposed, the confidence and gratitude of Loughborough the King, went to London to attend a Cabinet Council on the last day of the month. He examined Lord Castlereagh, who was present on this day, as he had been at former meetings of the Cabinet, when the affairs of Ireland were discussed. The Irish Secretary appears to have been exceedingly reserved in his answers, and to have denied that any promise had been made to the Catholics, and even that encouragement had been given them to hope for immediate relief. The Chancellor raised many ob

*He complained of the 'abruptness' with which the questions had been put to him by the King, and thought an unfair advantage was taken of him.-

ROSE's Correspondence, vol. i. p. 300.

LORD CAMPBELL's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. vi. p. 326.

292

DIFFICULTIES OF THE CABINET..

CH. XLL

jections to the measure. Considerable doubt was manifested by other members. Pitt, disappointed at the turn the discussion had taken, postponed the further consideration of the question to a future day.

The strange part of the story, so far, is that the Chancellor should have derived his first information of this most important business from the letter of Mr. Pitt, on the 25th of September, 1801, when the whole matter had been fully discussed, and the faith of the Government pledged at a meeting of the Cabinet twelve months before. The last-mentioned Cabinet was summoned for the special purpose. It appears, from Lord Castlereagh's account, that it was attended by several members; * yet the Lord Chancellor never received any report of the proceedings of that Cabinet, either from the first minister, or any of his colleagues who were present. The whole transaction appears inexplicable upon the modern theory and practice of the joint and several responsibility of the leading members of administration for measures determined in Cabinet Council. And this omission seems the more remarkable, when we find that two persons, high in office indeed, but not members of the Cabinet, thought themselves entitled to complain that they had not been apprised of a project of such importance as a scheme for the settlement of the Catholic question. Lord Clare, the Irish Chancellor, reproached the Lord Lieutenant and the Secretary in bitter terms for withholding from him the intentions of the Government. Clare, having been deep in the counsels of the Union, might well feel slighted, at being kept in ignorance of a matter so intimately connected with that great transaction. But there was a reason for this reserve. The Chancellor of Ireland was the most uncompromising, and by far the ablest and most influential among the opponents of

* Letter to Mr. Pitt, quoted above.

1801.

THE MAYNOOTH QUESTION.

293

the Catholic claims. He was not a man to be conciliated, corrupted, or silenced; he was deeply committed against any further concession to the Catholics; his conduct on the Maynooth Bill, in 1799, was not forgotten. The object of that bill was to provide for the education in Ireland of students intended for the Catholic priesthood; and it formed part of the measure for the endowment of the Romish clergy, a branch of the great scheme of conciliation by which the Government sought to effect the substantial union of the two kingdoms. The Maynooth Bill had passed the Irish House of Commons as a Government Bill; but when it went up to the Lords, the Chancellor broke out into an invective against the Catholic priesthood, denounced the policy of supporting institutions for the education of the priests, and would not suffer the bill to go into committee. It is probable, therefore, that Lord Clare would have made use of any information which might have been imparted to him as to the views of the Cabinet on the Catholic question, to raise a Protestant alarm in Ireland, and ensure the defeat of the whole policy. Another person, who felt himself aggrieved by the reserve of the Government, was Lord Auckland. This busy, mischievous politician, presuming partly on Pitt's friendship, and partly on an overweening conceit of his own importance, thought proper to write a long letter to Pitt, reproaching him as if he had been guilty of treacherous dissimulation, condemning the supposed measures, and intimating very plainly his expectation, that, in consequence of his disapproval, they would be abandoned. Pitt answered this ebullition of impertinence and vanity with half a dozen caustic lines, which put a summary end to the correspondence.

The removal of the Test was not proposed, nor, as it would seem, even incidentally discussed, at the subsequent meetings of the Cabinet. At a Cabinet,