Fragment of a letter : "Service" [Spain?], to George Canning, 1809 Oct. 30.

Acknowledging receipt of his letters of the 27th and 28th of September and the statement enclosed in the letter of the 27th; saying "No document however was requisite to convince me of the absolute injustice of Lord Castlereagh's accusations of your conduct. I know positively, that the charge against you is groundless and that the entire blame is to be attributed to Lord C's own friends, who have attempted to transfer their offences against their Friend to your account;" commenting on a newspaper account of "previous impressions, which have been received, of my being under engagement not to serve in any Cabinet, of which you should not be a member. I confess however that, from long habits of negligence, I seldom attend to the abuse or praise of the newspapers, and never attach any importance to either; and I am still more inattentive to their professed statements of Fact;" discussing, at length and in detail, the issues surrounding the controversy over a successor to the Duke of Portland as the First Lord of the Treasury and whether the position should come from the House of Lords or from the House of Commons; asking "If you had proposed to act with me, as First Lord of the Treasury, can you suppose, that the situation of your Department and your own situation in the H. of Commons would not have been greatly strengthened by such an arrangement? or can you doubt of the exertions, by which I should have applied whatever power, I might possess to your aid & assistance? I really cannot understand the nature of your feelings on this point; they are so entirely contradictory to all my sentiments, that you must excuse me, if I cannot agree on the wisdom of excluding your most attached Friend from the First Office in the Cabinet, (to which your Colleagues would not admit you) lest his activity in that situation should affect the strength of your own Department. You might have done me the justice to believe that my respect and affection for you would have imparted to you a large share of the influence of my Office; & would not such an arrangement, if not the best, have been infinitely preferable to the Dissolution of the Government, which was the only remaining alternative when you pressed your claims in opposition to the opinion of your Colleagues, of your Party & of the King. The result of these unfortunate events has been to expose the King to the mercy of the opposition, & to weaken every foundation of that system of Government, which is connected with the support of his Authority and with those principles, which I have ever been anxious to maintain. I cannot comprehend what view of public Service, you can now entertain with any hope of success, unless by some happy qualification of your opinions, your should be induced to reunite with your old friends, & to feel the necessity of sacrificing a portion of your particular sentiments & of your individual power, for the purpose of preserving the whole fabric of a system, which cannot subsist without some degree of mutual accommodation...Although I would have acted with you most cordially in any situation to which the King or the Country might have called you, no consideration could induce me to support you in the prosecution of a claim, which however just and public spirited in your estimation, is not in my..."