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In August 1796, on his father’s elevation to the earldom, Stewart took as courtesy title his father’s viscountcy of Castlereagh. He was one of Camden’s close advisers, personally responsible for the arrest of United Irish leaders in Belfast in September 1796. The checking of disaffection among his father’s tenantry prevented his attendance at Westminster that winter, but he carried proposals for national defence at College Green in February 1797 and moved a loyal address in May. In June he accepted an Irish sinecure, the privy seal, worth £1,500 p.a. and vacated his English seat, retaining his Irish one unopposed. In October he became a lord of the Treasury and privy councillor. Owing to Pelham’s ill health, Camden returned to the idea of his protégé acting as his secretary. His appeal to Pitt and Portland of 16 Mar. 1798, in which he stated that although Castlereagh was reluctant and would have yielded to William Elliot*, the former objections to him must now be ruled out, was successful. On 29 Mar., by an ‘almost unavoidable necessity’, Castlereagh was appointed secretary ‘during the indisposition of the Rt. Hon. Thomas Pelham’. Although he had no share in any of the excesses committed under the proclamation of 30 Mar. enabling the military to suppress sedition, he was subsequently blamed for them. The arrest of the United Irish leaders in May, secured by him, frustrated their conspiracy to seize Dublin. Cornwallis, who superseded Camden as lord lieutenant after the insurrection in June, found Castlereagh anxious to encourage his conciliatory policy by snubbing the ultras of the Castle ‘gang’. He thought him ‘a very uncommon young man, and possesses temper, talents, and judgment suited to the highest stations, without prejudices or any views that are not directed to the general benefit of the British empire’. William Elliot, too, praised his ‘temper,