communicate with Lord Buckingham; I said I should go to Avington to-morrow, and as he said he was going next week to Bath, he should be happy to receive a communication from Lord Buckingham any day the end of this week, and that if Lord Buckingham would honour him by an interview, much more could be done, and more explained, than by letter, and he should be happy to see him. LORD GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM. Dropmore, Dec. 2, 1821. The two facts which your two letters have successively communicated have in the first instance highly delighted, and in the second proportionably dispirited me. Wellesley's appointment I verily believe to be the best that could be made. But what can I say of that of his secretary?--a man who may, for what I know, have virtues and talents of which it never fell in my way to hear a word, but who is known to the public here, and in Ireland, by nothing but the having made in the Catholic debates in the very last year, the most absurd speech and motion that could have come from the lips of Duigenan himself. If one could laugh on such a subject, and when such interests are at stake, what can exceed the ridicule of thus systematically coupling together a friend and an enemy to toleration, like fat and lean rabbits, or the man and his wife in a Dutch toy, or like fifty other absurdities made to be laughed at, but certainly never before introduced into politics as fixed and fundamental systems for the conduct of the most difficult and dangerous crisis of a country. What is to result from this disheartening folly? Is Wellesley a man likely to submit, like some of his predecessors, to be made a cypher in his Government? Is Plunket disposed to see the whole detail of daily business, and the whole character and temper of the Secretary's office fall back into the old channels; and that after the nomination of Grant, and his conduct since he went to Ireland, had both been among the principal inducements to him to look at a situation so far beneath his just pretensions? And what, I might ask, would be Wellesley's own situation between the Secretary at home from whom he receives orders, and the Secretary at Dublin to whom he is to give orders, if I did not believe that with all his failings he possesses a high and independent spirit, which will lead him to assert himself decisively in the very first moment of the counteraction, which is thus studiously and systematically provided to embarrass him in all his operations. But above all, what a picture does it present of the councils to which you are invited to unite yourself!