In Ireland, affairs grew to a crisis. The Opposition were inflamed with resentment at the Secret Committee set up by the Duke of Bedford, the management of which they had wrested from him. As the season, too, approached for the departure of the Lord Lieutenant, the Primate had no time to lose for recovering his place in the Regency. Every reason of policy and decency made it more eligible to him to obtain that situation by gentle means than by violence. He and Ponsonby offered terms to the Duke of Bedford, who, though confessing their superiority in the House of Commons, refused to unite with them. In truth, he had involved himself so much with Lord Kildare, and was so unwilling to disoblige Fox by disobliging that Lord, that he knew not how to extricate himself. If Kildare would have softened towards the Primate, the accommodation would soon have been completed; but he would not desert himself; and he knew his party would desert him if once reconciled to the Prelate. More, the Black Rod, was dispatched to England to consult Mr. Fox; the Duke hoping in the meantime to be able to govern independently of either party. The first step he took towards the system only tended to make it more impracticable. A Judge’s place falling vacant, the Lord Lieutenant, to demonstrate his impartiality, offered the nomination to the Chancellor, who recommended Malone’s greatest enemy, a creature of the Primate, and one formerly employed by Lord George Sackville to write pamphlets on their side. His preferment, thus obtained, was no obligation to the Primate: Malone resented it strongly, and soon took an opportunity of exerting his resentment. The Secret Committee got enlarged powers, intending to turn them against the Duke of Bedford’s Treasury; and the party in general hurried to hostilities. The Lord Lieutenant’s secretary was a place of great profit, if in the hands of an intelligent and interested man. He had fees from every new commission in the army; and his selling regiments and subordinate ranks had long passed as a matter scarce to be disavowed. If he had great power over his patron, and none over himself, Bishoprics and every other preferment in the gift or at the recommendation of the Lord Lieutenant were marketable at the secretary’s apartments in the Castle. But it was on the death of a King that the secretaryship was largely lucrative. He touched for every renewal of commission and patent. With some of these advantages, Mr. Conway had been a sufferer by the employment. The table and equipage are very expensive for the year of the Lord Lieutenant’s residence in Ireland. It is the second, the fallow[16] year, that indemnifies both the master and the servant; and the Duke of Devonshire quitted before their second year.