picture; suppose an assembly, not ruled, as it was suggested, by a club of Jacobins, but by a Swiss major, who robbed the treasury of France, and bought the Assembly. You can apply this instance.

Mr. Locke has the following passage: "Such revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs: great mistake on the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty, will be borne without mutiny or murmur; but if a long train of abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending one way, making the design visible to the people- " Mr. Locke then states what the design is.

"What I have said concerning the legislature", he continues, "is equally true concerning the supreme executive. He acts contrary to his trust when he either employs the force, treasure, or offices of the society to corrupt the representatives and gain them to his purpose, or openly corrupts the electors, and prescribes to their choice such, whom he by solicitation, promises, or otherwise has previously wo to his designs, and employs then. to bring in such who promised beforehand what to vote and what to enact Thus to regulate candidates and electors, and new-model the ways of election, what is it but to cut up government by the roots, and poison the very sources of public security? For the people, having reserved to themselves the choice of their representatives as a fence to their properties, could do it for no other erd but that they might be always truly chosen, and so chosen, truly act and debate as the necessity of the commonwealth should, on examination, be judged to require; and this, those who give their votes before they hear, are not capable of doing. To prepare such an assembly as this, and to endeavour to set up the declared abettors of his own will as the true representatives of the people, is certainly as great a breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subvert the government as can possibly be".

I must observe on this passage, that in the opinion of Mr. Locke, parliament as well as kings may abdicate; and having quoted the passage, let me quote the declaration and confession of the Irish ministry: "Half a million was expended by government in 1769, to defeat the aristocracy; that is, to buy the representatives of the people; and gentlemen may now force government to expend a greater sum for the same purpose". I will now state the fact as appears from your establishment, and as you all allow it to be: the interest of about that sum was expended to buy the parliament, and it was bought accordingly. I will state another account: a stockpurse was made by the minister, partly out of the sale of peerages,

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to buy up seats in parliament, in order to introduce only such men as had previously agreed to vote with the minister, and both facts constitute severally or jointly what Mr. Locke calls "preparing such an assembly as he describes, and setting up the abettors of the will of the minister as the representatives of the people. Here is the present model—the trade of parliament instead of the constitution. See its effects! The strongest question that could be put to the nationality of the Commons, was that which related to the trade of Ireland with the East. The question was simply this: whether Ireland should exercise that trade, or individuals sell it to the minister of the crown, acting in Ireland as an agent to the East India Company, and after three debates it was determined for the Company, against the country, by her own parliament, under the influence of her minister, who proposed that Ireland should be satisfied with the right, and leave the profits of the trade to the company; the country, by her exertions, had established the right; the individual, by corruption, sold the exercise.

It happened in 1779, that the claim of what they called free trade, had gone directly to the exercise, and not to the right. It said that nothing but a free trade could save this country from impending ruin; meaning not a title to trade, but possession. It happened also, that when government, through the instrumentality of her parliament, stopped the trade of Ireland to the unoccupied parts of the East, Spain interrupted the trade of England to the unoccupied parts of the North-west, and stood with respect to England as government stood with respect to Ireland; with this differenceSpain was a natural and open enemy, the other carries on a war against the interest of her country with her own money, and under the trust and the name of her government.

There was a circumstance attending this treachery that made it still more mortifying. This very government had called upon Ireland for a vote of credit against Spain, and placed the Irish Parliament in the most extraordinary and degrading predicament, voting money to a war with Spain for interrupting the trade of England to the North-west, and assisting England in interrupting the trade of Ireland to the East; assisting government to do against Ireland that very act which she was to fight Spain for attempting to commit against Great Britain.

The question cannot end here; it is the cause of free trade and free constitution revived; that cause for which this country committed life and fortune; not for a barren right, but for profitable possession, not to give a portion of it to the East India Company, still less to

suffer their own servants to sell a portion of it to the Company's agent residing here under the name of your minister; least of all, to suffer that very agent to draw back a portion of your trade by pilfering the treasury to buy the parliament, and to betray the late illustrious acquisitions of their country. On this principle might gen tlemen give up the American European colonial trade; it would be only a question about the quantum of money expended on the members, and the quantum of danger incurred by their notorious acts of bribery and dereliction.

The rejection of a reponsibility bill, and, still more, the principle on which it was rejected, is another effect of the trade of parliament. To say that, without responsibility in the officers of state, there can be no limited monarchy, would be unnecessary in any enlightened country except Ireland; indeed, the existence of responsibility is as essential to the limitation of the monarchy, as the existence of a king to monarchy itself; and yet when the servants of the crown argued against the bill, such ignorance did these men display, that they affirmed, that were the ministers of the crown responsible in Ireland for what they did by the orders of the king, yet they were above him, viceroys over him; and tattle of that sort. These men who had been talking and talking about the British constitution, showed they were misinformed both of the fact of the constitution in one country, and the principles of it in both. It was thus La Mancha's knight discoursed about the perfections of his mistress, whom he never beheld. As on the East India question they had resisted their free trade, so here they resisted their free constitution, and contended for absolute impunity in every abuse of power and prerogative that could be committed by the servants of the crown, and by none more likely to be committed than themselves, acting under the authority of the first magistrate.

They were the more inexcusable for this doctrine, because they had before them their own crimes; many of them sat in the house, like gorgeous satraps, dressed in their own extortica; they had also in recollection the crimes of their predecessors; of those lord-lieuter.ants and their, secretaries, whom these men had supported. In 1769, the army was increased to 15,000 men, under compact to keep within the kingdom at all times, except invasion or rebellion in Great Britain, 12,000 men: and in 1779 you had not 5000; and government get your own consent to your nakedness. In 1773, tenth was added to your revenues, on compact to stop the further growth of debt, and in 1775, a new debt was presented to you. in 1785, new taxes were presented on specific estimates of all

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your expenses, and every one of those estimates instantly and ever since grossly and corruptly exceeded. In 1783, an addition is made to the place of the private secretary to the Lord-lieutenant, on compact that he is not to have a pension. He takes a pension; his successor keeps the addition; and the nation continues saddled with both. In 1766 a king's letter is sent over promising a specific reduction of most of the offices in the orduance; in 1789, every word c the letter was falsified, and every salary of those places increased for parliamentary influence. In 1773, a promise was made, in consideration of new taxes, to keep the boards of stamps and accounts united. In 1789, that promise is falsified, and they are divided for corruption. In 1773, the boards of revenue are united, and the number of the commissioners on compact reduced; and in 1789, the compact is broken for corruption.

In 1785, the ministers in the respective countries come forward with two sets of propositions. The Irish secretary produces one part of the plan as the ultimatumn of government, and for that he gets your taxes; the English minister then produces the other part, and for this he asks your constitution; and Ireland, like a poor traveller, is glad to escape with her life and her liberty, after having been fleeced by two robbers. I only state a few instances cf perfidy out of a thousand instances of mal-administration.

Carthage, or what the Roman historian has said of Carthage, has not exceeded your ministers in the fallibility of public honour. The ministers of this country have acted here on the principle of East India adventurers; but here there is less vigour in the soil, and therefore less plunder in your government; send these men beyond the line, send them to Arcot and the Ganges, and that principle will be rapine; keep them to Ireland, it is peculation; it is the sale of the country for half a million; it is robbing the country to buy the parliament.

The persons who opposed the responsibility were therefore perfectly apprised of its necessity: they should have felt it in the general principles of the constitution; they must have felt it in the particular abuses in the Irish constitution; they felt in their own particular situation, that the minister of Ireland, as our administration is at present constituted, has an interest opposite to the welfare of the country. It was once the object of the Irish government to support the supremacy of the British Parliament; it is now their object to supply that supremacy, and establish the corruption of the Irish in its place.

What made these present men ministers? What, but a steady

opposition to the independent exertions of parliament, and an activity to corrupt it. The liberty of the country has served the individual; it has made their treachery precious: and corrupt Irishmen must now do what powerful Englishmen did before them.

The constitution of parliament may be divided into two parts: internal, which comprehends the existence of parliament; and external, which comprehends its creation. As to the former, it is not the mere existence, but the independency of its existence, wherein the freedom subject consists. To restore that independency a place bill was inaced. The legislators, the purse-bearers, the grand inquisition and great council of the nation, had as little control on the monarch as his beef-eaters. When the place-bill was proposed and rejected-Brennus and the Gauls-the right honorable gentleman was in your lobby with his mouth in every man's ear, and his touch in every man's palm!

By the rejection of the bill, they seemed to declare, that the House had been bought, was bought, and should be bought again. Among other arguments against the bill, one was advanced by autho rity, that the bill would prevent the crown from combating aristocracy, by bribing the Irish Parliament. What an argument for a radical application-for a decisive measure to bring back your constitution to its first principles !

The pension lists pension lists are king among the

This bill was rejected along with a pension bill. so called are two-civil and military; but the real more numerous; they distribute the bounty of the senate the licentiousness of the court, and the enemies of the realm. This is called a part of the dignity of the Crown. Corruption has not only reached the hearts of men, but it has debased their dialect; and our public language is become the speech of hypocrisy and imposture.

In rejecting both these bills, the ministerial language was, "it is true they are the laws of England, but they are not fit for the meridian of Ireland". This is much more than asserting that Ireland should not be free; it is asserting that England should be free, and Ireland should not; you may put the question of servitude in such a shape as to disgust the pride of a Cappadocian. The lot of Ireland, according to this reasoning, becomes particular degradation. bear misfortunes patiently, because they are the portion of man; but if they were the inheritance of you and of me only; if the imperfection of the dispensations, ordinances, and decrees of nature were visited on one tribe of the human species; if Providence had spoken like the ministers of our country, "these blessings are

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