Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/185

Rh equal to a pretty good day's fag in shooting, but I think that I rather train off as a marksman; this sport, however, amuses me, and is an inducement to take exercise, which I am persuaded is right.' The affairs of India again occupied his attention. He was consulted about a suggestion for giving Jonathan Duncan, who had been a successful administrator of the Province of Benares, and who was then Governor of Bombay, a seat in Council in Bengal, and placing him at the head of the whole Revenue department. At the same time, too, he seems to have been asked privately whether he would care again to go to Ireland as Commander-in-Chief. Nothing came of this, nor is there any trace of the offer in the State Papers.

He sat to Hoppner the well-known portrait painter, and in this fashion some months passed away. But he was quite ready to do the State further service, and even Culford, with its rural pleasures and occupations, began to pall. 'To sit down quietly by myself, without occupation or object, to contemplate the dangers of my country, with the prospect of being a mere cypher, without arms in my hands,' was not pleasing to a man whose previous life had been usefully and actively spent. In a letter written in September, 1803, he notes that it was not his fault that he did not again go to Ireland. He would not have meddled with politics, and would have been entirely under the Lord-Lieutenant. As it was he considered himself to be 'laid quietly on the shelf.' As Constable of the