position which renders their ultimate success certain, I am very far from participating in the sanguine expectations of those who think the Duke of Wellington is convinced that the question must be settled directly, and that he will carry it through in the ensuing session. In the first place I see clearly that the Government are extremely annoyed at Dawson's speech. I saw Goulburn to-day, and though he did not say much, what he did say was enough to satisfy me of this: 'he hoped that it had been incorrectly reported.' Dawson has written to the Duke,[12] and the letter was sent to him to-day. But what has put me in despair about it is a letter of the Duke's which Drummond read to me to-day addressed, I do not know to whom, but upon that subject. It began, 'My dear sir,' and after other matter proceeded nearly as follows:--'This subject has been more discussed and more pamphlets have been written upon it in the course of the last twenty-five years than any other that I can remember. No two people are agreed upon what ought to be done, and yet the Government is expected at once to settle the question.' This is the old argument, as if after thirty years' discussion in every shape it was not time to settle the question. As if those who undertake to govern the country were not the men who are bound to find the means of settling it and allaying the irritation it causes. And as if, instead of no two persons being agreed upon the subject, all the ablest and wisest men in the country were not cordially agreed that complete emancipation is the only remedy for the evils that exist, and that they are opposed by the most despicable faction which ever existed, animated by the most base and sordid motives. This letter was read to me as conveying the Duke's opinions, which his secretary thought were very sound and sensible, and which I think evinced a degree of anility quite pitiable, and proves how little there is to expect from any liberality and good sense on his part. [11] [Mr. Peel's confidential letter to the Duke of Wellington, stating his reluctant conviction that it was indispensably necessary for the Government to change its policy on the Catholic question, was written on the 11th of August, 1828. The letter is published in Sir Robert Peel's 'Posthumous Memoirs,' vol. i, p. 189. It is a remarkable circumstance that Mr. Dawson's speech at Derry was made _just one week afterwards_; but there is no evidence that he knew of the change in his brother-in-law's opinion. See for further details as to the effect of Dawson's speech _infra_.] [12] [This letter is published in the Duke of Wellington's 'Correspondence,' New Series, vol. iv. p. 633. The Duke said, 'Dawson's speech is too bad. Surely a man who does such things ought to be put in a strait waistcoat.' _Ibid._ p. 636.]