Subsequently at the time of the Union a controversy arose in regard to these events. Mr. Pitt asserted that the adjustment of 1782 was not considered by the British Ministers by whom it was effected as final in its character; but that, on the contrary, they were fully convinced of the necessity of adopting some further measures to strengthen the connection between the two countries, and he produced the correspondence which had passed in 1782—extracts from which have been given above—as a reply to the lame attempt of General Fitzpatrick, who was still in Parliament, to deny that any such negotiation had been desired by the members of Lord Rockingham’s Ministry. General Fitzpatrick had declined to admit more than that the Duke of Portland, during his residence in Ireland, might have entertained a vague idea of some farther arrangement for consolidating the connection with Ireland, but had soon given it up; and Grattan in the Irish Parliament openly accused Lord Shelburne and the Duke of having concealed their views from their colleagues, and said that, above all, Mr. Fox knew nothing of the project contained in the despatch of June 6th.(138) The truth is, that the Rockingham Ministry was in June a house divided against itself, owing to differences of opinion as to the peace negotiation with France and the United States, and was almost in the actual throes of dissolution. From a letter written by Fox in 1799 to Fitzpatrick, it certainly appears that the so-called “Ogilvy” negotiation never was communicated to him.(139) But the assertion of Mr. Pitt went far beyond the Ogilvy negotiation—if negotiation it can be called. What Mr. Pitt asserted was, not that the correspondence proved that in June, 1782, the Ministers were actually intending to enter on any such negotiation, but that the Prime Minister, the Lord-Lieutenant, and both Secretaries of State, from the very commencement of the correspondence in April, considered the arrangement insisted on by Grattan deficient, and lacking in finality, and were only prevented by the stress of adverse circumstances and the impracticable character of the Irish leaders, from trying to negotiate an agreement, by which Ireland should acknowledge that “the superintending power and supremacy were where Nature had placed them”—viz., in the Government of Great Britain.