ABSTRACT
Irish affairs continued to absorb Burke’s attention almost to the day of his death. For a while during the first two months of 1795, when his close friend Fitzwilliam was viceroy of Ireland, Burke held high hopes that his policy of Catholic emancipation would be extended. But George Ill’s inveterate opposition and the equivocation of Pitt resulted in Fitzwilliam’s sudden recall. When Grattan’s attempt to put some of Fitzwilliam’s policies into effect was voted down by the Irish Parliament, Burke expressed his despair in one of his last statements of importance on Irish affairs, when on May 26, 1795, he wrote his Second Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe.
