Pitt was bitterly disappointed by his failure, and lost a good deal of his interest in Ireland. He adopted the view of successive Lords-Lieutenant that genuine parliamentary reform was incompatible with the supremacy of the Executive. “There can, I think, be little doubt,” pronounces Lecky, “that the prospect of a legislative union was already in his mind, and it was probably the real key to much of his subsequent policy.” Dr. Holland Rose quotes a significant letter of Pitt to the Viceroy, Lord Westmorland, in the autumn of 1792. “The idea of the present fermentation gradually bringing both parties to think of an Union with this country has long been in my mind. I hardly dare flatter myself with the hope of its taking place; but I believe it, though itself not easy to be accomplished, to be the only solution for other and greater difficulties.” Thus the Grattan Parliament never had a fair chance. The dual system could only be worked by mutual good will, and if one of the partners withheld her aid, the experiment was doomed. Pitt was not yet openly hostile; but he allowed his agents in Dublin to shape their own course. He recognised that the root of Irish crime was to be found in the tithe system, and suggested in 1786 that tithes should be commuted; yet when Grattan brought forward proposals with this object he allowed the Executive to defeat them. Pitt’s growing dislike of the system of 1782 was reinforced by the action of the Irish Parliament in the Regency crisis. When the King became insane in 1788, the Whigs contended that their patron, the Prince of Wales, should automatically exercise the power of the Crown, while Pitt retorted that it was for Parliament to appoint him Regent, and to define his powers. The Irish Parliament sided with the Whigs, Grattan and the Nationalists on the constitutional ground that Pitt’s proposed safeguards were unnecessary in Ireland, the camp-followers in view of the probable change in the source of patronage. The controversy terminated with the King’s restoration to health; but the Prime Minister never forgot nor forgave the encouragement rendered to his enemies at the crisis of his fate.