of my family are promoted to the highest military situations, my birth, according to the distinctions usually conferred on it, should have placed me first on that list. I hope you know me too well, to imagine that idle inactive rank is in my view; much less is the direction and patronage of the military departments an object which suits my place in the state, or my inclinations; but, in a moment when the danger of the country is thought by government so urgent as to call forth the energy of every man in its defence, I cannot but feel myself degraded, both as a prince and as a soldier, if I am not allowed to take a forward and distinguished part in the defence of that empire and crown, of the glory, prosperity, and even existence of that people in all which mine is the greatest stake. To be told I may display this zeal solely and simply at the head of my regiment, is a degrading mockery. If that be the only situation alloted me, I shall certainly do my duty, as others will; but the considerations to which I have already alluded entitle me to expect, and bind me in every way to require, a situation more correspondent to the dignity of my own character and to the public expectations. It is for the sake of tendering my services in a way more formal and official than I have before pursued, that I address this to you, my dear brother, as the commander in chief, by whose counsels the constitution presumes that the military department is administered. If those who have the honour to advise his majesty on this occasion, shall deem my pretensions, among those of all the royal family, to be the only one fit to be rejected and disdained, I may at least hope, as a debt of justice and honour, to have it explained, that I am laid by in virtue of that judgment, and not in consequence of any omission or want of energy on my part, &c. &c. &c. (Signed) G. P. W. His Royal Highness the Duke of York, &c. Horse Guards, Oct. 6, 1803. Dearest brother, Nothing but an extraordinary press of business would have prevented me from acknowledging sooner your letter of the 2d instant, which I received, while at Oatlands, on Monday evening. I trust that you are too well acquainted with my affection for you, which has existed since our most tender years, not to be assured of the satisfaction I have felt, and ever must feel, in forwarding, when in my power, every desire or object of your's; and, therefore, will believe how much I must regret the impossibility there is, upon the present occasion, of my executing your wishes of laying the representation contained in your letter before his majesty. Suffer me, my dearest brother, as the only answer that I can properly give you, to recal to your memory what passed upon the same subject soon after his majesty was graciously pleased to place me at the head of the army; and I have no doubt that, with your usual candour, you will yourself see the absolute necessity of my declining it. In the year 1795, upon a general promotion taking place, at your instance, I delivered a letter from you to his majesty; urging your pretensions to promotion in the army; the crown and the kingdom may depend. I do not, my dear brother, wonder that, in the hurry of your present occupations, these considerations should have been overlooked; they are now in your view, and I think cannot fail to make a due impression. As to the rest, with every degree of esteem possible for your judgment of what is due to a soldier's honour, I must be the guardian of mine to the utmost of my power, &c. &c. (Signed) G. P. His Royal Highness the Duke of York. it to me, when I delivered to you the king's answer, as I should cer tainly have felt it incumbent upon me to recal to your memory, what you had told me yourself in the year 1793. No conversation whatever passed between us, as you justly remark, in the year 1796, when sir William Pitt was promoted to the king's dragoon guards, which was done in consequence of what was ar. ranged in 1793, upon your first appointment to the 10th light dragoons; and I conceive, that your mentioning in your letter my having stated a conversation to have passed between us in 1798, must have Horse Guards, Oct. 11. arisen from some misapprehension, My dear brother, I have this moment, upon my arrival in town, found your letter, and lose no time in answering that part of it which appears to me highly necessary should be clearly understood. Indeed, my dear brother, you must give me leave to repeat to you, that, upon the fullest consideration, I perfectly recollect your having yourself told me, at Carltonhouse, in the year 1793, on the day on which you was informed of his majesty's having acquiesced in your request of being appointed to the command of the 10th regiment of light dragoons, of which sir William Pitt was then colonel, the message and condition which was delivered to you from his majesty, and which his majesty repeated to me, in the year 1795, as mentioned in my letter of Thursday last and I have the fullest reason to know, that there are others to whom, at that time, you mentioned the same circumstance; nor have I the least recollection of your having denied as I do not find that year ever adverted to in my letter. I have thought it due to us both, my dear brother, thus fully to reply to those parts of your letter, in which you appear to have mistaken mine; but, as I am totally unac quainted with the correspondence which has taken place upon this subject, I must decline entering any further into it. I remain ever, my dear brother, Brighton, Oct. 12, 1803. My dear brother, By my replying to your letter of the 6th instant, which contained no sort of answer to mine of the second, we have fallen into a very frivolous altercation, upon a topic which is quite foreign to the present purpose: indeed, the whole importance of it lies in a seeming contradiction in the statement of a fact, which is unpleasant, even upon the idlest occasion. I meant I meant to assert that no previous condition to forego all pretensions to ulterior rank, under any circumstances, had been imposed upon me, or even submitted to me, in any shape whatsoever, on my first coming into the service; and with as much confidence as can be used in maintaining a negative, I repeat that assertion. When I first became acquainted with his majesty's purpose to withhold from me further advancement, it is impossible to recollect; but that it was so early as the year 1793, I do not remember; and if your expressions were less positive, I should add, or believe; but I certainly knew it, as you well know, in 1795, and possibly before. We were then engaged in war, therefore I could not think of resigning my regiment, if, under other circumstances, I had been disposed to do it; but, in truth, my rank in the nation made military rank, in ordinary times, a matter of little consequence, except to my own private feelings. This sentiment I conveyed to you in my letter of the second, saying, expressly, that mere idle, inactive rank, was in no sort my object. But upon the prospect of an emergency, where the king was to take the field, and the spirit of every Briton was roused to exertion, the place which I occupy in the nation, made it indispensible to demand a post correspondent to that place, and to the public expectation. This sentiment, I have the happiness to be assured, in a letter on this occasion, made a strong impression on the mind, and commanded the respect and admiration of one very high in government. The only purpose of this letter, my dear brother, is to explain, since that is necessary, that my former ones meant not to give you the trouble of interceding as my advocate for mere rank in the army. Urging further my other more important claims upon government, would be vainly addressed to any person, who can really think that a formal refusal of merc rank, under circumstances so widely dif ferent, or the most express waving of such pretensions, if that had been the case, furnishes the slightest colour for the answer which I have received to the tender I have now made of my services. Your department, my dear brother, was meant, if I must repeat it, simply as a channel to convey that tender to government, and to obtain either their attention to it, or an open avowal of their refusal, &c. (Signed) G.P. To His Royal Highness the Duke of York. Horse Guards, Oct. 13. Dear brother, I have received your letter this morning, and am sorry to find, that you think that I have misconceived the meaning of your first letter, the whole tenor of which, and the military promotion which gave rise to it, led me naturally to suppose your desire was, that I should apply to his majesty, in my official capacity, to give you military rank, to which might be attached the idea of subsequent command. That I found myself under the necessity of declining, in obedienco to his majesty's pointed orders, as I explained to you in my letter of the 6th instant; but, from your letter of to-day, I am to understand that your object is not military rank, but, that a post should be allotted to you, upon the present emergency, suitable to your situation in the state. This I conceive to be purely a political consideration, and, as such, totally out of my department; and, as I have most carefully avoided, at all times, and under all circumstances, ever interfering in any political points, I must hope that you will not call upon me to deviate from the principles by which I have been invariably governed. Believe me, my dear brother, in the state." Upon what ground you can hazard such an assertion, or upon what principles you can draw such an inference, I am utterly at a loss to determine. For I defy the most skilful logician, in torturing the English language, to apply with fairness such a construction to any word or phrase of mine, contained in any one of the letters I have ever written on this, to me, most interesting subject. I call upon you to re-peruse the correspondence. In my letter of the 2d instant, I told you unequivocally that I hoped you knew me too well to imagine, that ille, inactive rank was in my view; and that sentiment, I beg you carefully to observe, I have, in no instance whatCarlton House, Oct. 14. ever, for one single moment, relinMy dear brother, quished or departed from. His Royal Highness the It cannot but be painful to me to be reduced to the necessity of further explanation on a subject, which it was my earnest wish to have closed, and which was of so clear and distinet a nature, as, in my humble judgment, to have precluded the possibility of either doubt or misunderstanding. Surely there must be some strange fatality to obscure my language in statement, or leave me somewhat deficient in the powers of explanation, when it can lead your mind, my dear brother, to such a palpable misconstruction (for far be it from me to fancy it wilful) of my meaning, as to suppose for a moment I had unconnected my object with efficient military rank, and transferred it entirely to the view of a political station, when you venture to tell me 66 my object is not military rank, but that a post should be allotted to me, upon the present emergency, suitable to my situation Giving, as I did, all the considerations of my heart to the delicacy and difficulties of your situation, nothing could have been more repugnant to my thoughts, or to my disposition, than to have imposed upon you, my dear brother, either in your capacity as commander in chief, or in the near relationship which subsists between us, much less the expectation of causing you to risque any displeasure from his majesty, by disobeying, in any degree, his commands, although they were even to militate against myself. But, with the impulse of my feel. ings towards you, and quickly conceiving what friendship and affec tion may be capable of, I did not, I own, think it entirely impossible that you might, considering the magnitude and importance which the object carries with it, have officially advanced my wishes, as a matter of propriety, to military rank and subsequent command, through his majesty's jesty's ministers, for that direct purpose; especially when the honour of my character and my future fame in life were so deeply involved in the consideration. For, I must here emphatically again repeat," idle, inactive rank was never in my view; and that military rank, with its consequent command, was NEVER out of it." Feeling how useless, as well as ungracious, controversy is, upon every occasion, and knowing how fatally it operates on human friendship, I must entreat that our correspondence on this subject shall cease here; for nothing could be more distressing to me, than to prolong a topic, on which, it is now clear to me, my dear brother, that you and I can never agree, &c. (Signed) His Royal Highness the G. P. By your grounding your letter to me upon intelligence which has just reached you, I apprehend that you allude to information which leads you to expect some immediate attempt from the enemy. My wish to accommodate myself to any thing which you represent as material to the public service, would, of course, make me desirous to comply with your request; but if there be reason to imagine that invasion will take place directly, I am bound, by the king's precise order, and by that honest zeal which is not allowed any fitter sphere for its action, to hasten instantly to my regiment. If I learn that my construction of the word intelligence be right, I must deem it necessary to repair to Brighton immediately, &c. &c. (Signed) Right Hon. Henry Addington. G. P. Correspondence between the Right Hon. the Lord Chancellor of Ireland and the Earl of Fingall. (No. 1.) From the Right Hon. the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, to the Right Hon. the Earl of Fingall. Ely Place, Dublin, My lord, According to your lordship's request, I have signed, with great pleasure, a warrant for your lordship's appointment to be a justice of the peace for the county of Meath. At this moment, my lord, it is peculiarly important that every person entrusted specially with the preser |