deeply interested, and must be so anxious to compose our differences, and cement a-new, with fresh attachment, the bonds of connection between us."[1]
Grattan plainly intimated to Shelburne through a mutual friend, that he would admit no treaty or negotiation. There was not only to be no foreign legislature, but also "no commissioners."[2] The only concession which Portland was able to obtain was the adjournment of Parliament for three weeks from the 4th of May, "but," he wrote despairingly to Shelburne, "it is no longer the Parliament of Ireland that is to be managed or attended to. It is the whole of this country; it is the Church, the law, the army I fear, when I consider how it is composed; the merchant, the tradesman, the manufacturer, the farmer, the labourer, the Catholic, the Dissenter, the Protestant; all sects, all sorts and descriptions of men": and he sorrowfully confessed that it was true that every letter he had written had progressively reduced the hopes he had originally held out.[3] "Every day," he went on to say, "convinces me not only of the impossibility of prevailing on this country to recede from any one of the claims set forth in the addresses, but of the danger of new ones being started. The hope I expressed of reserving the final judicature, if not totally, at least by retaining the writ of error, no longer exists." Nevertheless he still had some hopes left. "I recommend," he wrote to his colleagues, "that positive assurances be given them that the alteration of the Mutiny Bill and the modification of Poynings' law shall be conceded to them in the form required by their Address; that the 6th of George I. shall be repealed, and that Writs of Error shall no longer be received by our Court of King's Bench; but that, as Great Britain by these concessions is desirous, not only of satisfying the expectations of the Irish upon all constitutional points, but of preventing every possible source of future jealousy and discontent, she does not doubt of receiving an unequivocal testimony of a corre-
