acquaintance with Lord Shelburne is very slight; but two essential points are Gospel, that he is a man of sense, and that he made an excellent husband to a wife far inferior to Lady Louisa in beauty. There is a third, which, though negative, I reckon a capital merit at present: he is not a gamester." By his marriage, Shelburne became brother-in-law to Richard Fitzpatrick the wit, and a connection of Charles Fox, whose brother Stephen, Lord Holland, had married Lady Mary, sister of Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick.
Owing to this family alliance, followed by the political negotiations detailed in the previous chapter, the Opposition by the end of 1779 was once more a united party. "Their principles," said Shelburne, "were the same; their future rule of conduct was to be correspondent; whatever different opinions they might have held, they no longer interfered with their general plan; they were confidentially and fully united in the great leading principle of new men and new measures; if the salvation of the country was to be effected, it was only by those means; if the country was to be saved from ruin, it could only be by a change of system."[1] There was indeed hardly any department of public policy which did not urgently call for attention. The organization of the Army, the administration of the Fleet, the overgrown influence of the Crown in Parliament, were all crying grievances. But first and foremost stood the condition of Ireland.
Ever since the struggle on the Army Bill in 1768, there had been but little alteration in the condition of the sister kingdom. Lord Townshend soon found that it was impossible in practice to manage the Irish Parliament without corruption, and although a certain change resulted from the struggle on the Augmentation Bill[2] in the composition of the party which represented the interests of the Castle, that party was none the less guided by self-interest, and was only kept together by rewards and pensions. Lord Shannon with his friends hovered between the Patriots and the Castle, anxious to
- ↑ Parliamentary History, xx. 1165.
- ↑ See Vol. I. p. 345 et seq.
