and therefore I wish for treaties. What treaties ?-treaties which can resolve none of those questions, which will leave these gentlemen as free as ever to rail at the war. This, put in common language, is this—we want to have repeated opportunities of considering this war, first, by the artificial question of calling for papers, and after, by objecting to the sufficiency of these papers, and by repeating the same question with the same insinuation against the war. And the best way of judging what use gentlemen will make of these papers, is by observing what use they have made of the motion for them—an attack, by insinuation or directly, on the wisdom, justice, or necessity of continuing the war. And the effects of such attacks

if often repeated, must be to raise murmurs against your taxes. But gentlemen, aware that they wanted subsidiary ground, have said, they call for these papers merely to show their power of calling for treaties. The answer to that is, that the right in the Irish Parliament to call for treaties, to inquire into the causes, considerations, and condition of a war, is admitted on every side, in the fullest, broadest, and most unequivocal manner; but when the purpose for which these papers are called, comes out in debate to be the retraction of an opinion already given, or of a support already promised, and put this moment to be voted, there the House will object to the motion for papers, not on the principle of right, but because it objects to the use which is to be made of them. The House will see that the motion for papers under these circumstances, is nothing more than an artificial motion to bring into debate objections against the war, and the argument founded on the right of this House to call for such will then appear to be nothing more than an artificial argument, to interest the pride of this assembly in the abuse of an unquestionable privilege, which it proposed to abuse, in order to

assert.

But, say gentlemen, we never had any treaties before us. You had the Spanish treaty laid before you, and must have every treaty laid before you, if you choose to call for it; but you will not call for any treaty merely for the purpose of retracting either a support which you have promised, or a sentiment which you have plighted. But are those gentlemen who call for treaties under pretence of information, ignorant, as they profess to be, of the state of the war? What treaty is necessary to inform them that France is sending an army to her coast, and meditates an invasion? In such a situation are ey to appoint a committee of inquiry to investigate papers, or a committee of supply to vote the army? Do not they, as well as any oue know, that the cause of the war is now lost in the conse

quence; and that the question, supposing it ever to have been a question, is not, whether England will partition France, but whether France will invade England? I would not on this question give a silent vote, but rather meet directly any unpopularity which might attend the support I mean to give government; and I am authorised by my honourable friend (Mr. Curran) to say, that on the subject of the war his sentiments coincide with mine.

The motion goes to excite commotion instead of unanimity; yet in voting against it, I by no means bind myself not to inquire hereafter respecting the conduct and object of the war; but I consider the moment of going into the committee of supply a most improper one to institute such an inquiry.

The House divided on Sir Laurence Parsons' motion :-Ayes 9, Noes 128; Majority 119. Tellers for the Ayes, Sir Laurence Parsons and Mr William Tighe. For the Noes, Mr. Marcus Beresford and Colonel Arthur Wellesley (afterwards Duke of Wellington).

WHIG REFORM.

March 4, 1794.

MR. GRATTAN said: The bill before you has been called a transfer of property. It is not so; the gentlemen who make the charge have not read the bill; it is not a transfer of the borough from A to B, but from A to all those who have the adjacent interests, landed or commercial, to all who have estates freehold, or terms for a certain number of years (for they must be included), or have carried on a trade for a certain time within a circle of twenty-four miles. If any one man has all the lands and towns within that circle, he probably will influence the return; but such estates are scarcely to be found in this kingdom, and when they are found, they will have their influence under any reform, unless you choose to rob the proprietor in order to amend the representation; and even in case of such estates, as in cases of great county interest, the return may be influenced, but it cannot be sold. This proprietary influence you may call the influence of the landlord on his tenants, but it is also the influence of the tenant on the landlord; instead of being, as now, the property of that person who is not a landlord, and whose best estate is his twelve burgesses. This boroughmonger it exting.shes,

and leads to a milder communication of manners, as well as diffusion of influence between landlord and tenant, with an additional teinptation of residence to the former, and improvement to the latter. It is, in short, an open of 200 seats to property, to talents, and to both mixed, to be elected by the yeomanry and citizens.

any

We have in this plan committed no violence on the principles of the constitution, and scarcely any on its geography. We have added one member to the counties and to the three cities, because we think the landed interest is not proportionably represented, and the ministerial interest beyond all proportion represented; and we have extended the boundary of the borough, because we find in the old boundary nothing to represent. We have not extended the boundary to the whole of the county, because we would not extinguish or overbalanec an integral part of the parliament-the citizens and burgesses; and we have extended the line beyond the borough, to a line of twentyfour miles, to encompass a mass of landed interest as long as land is productive, and commercial interest, if within twenty-four miles commerce shall exist. As commerce shall within that district increase and flourish, its balance on the return will increase, and there will yet remain a great landed interest in the representation, even though commerce should within that district totally decline. Thus we have, as far as is practicable, provided against the effect of the fluctuation of property; we have not corrected oligarchy, as was erroneously objected to us, by oligarchy, but by aristocracy and democracy mixed. We have applied the principles of the English constitution to the state of Irish property, with a decisive advantage for the present, and with such growing advantages to the future, as must arise from the growth of commerce and the growing diffusion of riches. Weigh, then, the objections to the bill, and you will find they amount either to a depreciation of the principles of the British constitution in their application to Ireland, or to a demand for an agrarian law.

I do not say that this bill, in its present shape, is perfect. On the contrary, I should wish to propose considerable alterations; the franchise should be extended to termors for years, perhaps some others; the duration of parliament should be diminished; the powers of the corporation to make voters totally extinguished. After these amendments, I do not say the bill would be then an exact representation of the property of the country, or of the propertied part of the community. No, because that is impossible, and that is unnecessary; no, but it would be a substantial representation of both; that is, it would answer all the political purposes of adequate representation; it would be quod erat desideratum; it would not be arithmeti

cally equal, but it would be substantially and practically adequate; it would give to the mass of property, commercial and landed, instead of a fourth, the whole of the return of members to serve in Parliament, and with the mass of property it would give you the best chance for the mass of talents. But, says my right honourable friend,* why agitate the people now? We have not created, we have found the agitation of this subject, and therefore the question now is not whether we shall agitate or abandon this subject. And sure I am, that we should agitate the people much more by renouncing, than by pursuing their great object,‚—a more equal representation of the people. We should then leave them at large on this subject to their own despair, or to those desperate suggestions which every seditious bungler may propose, while the abuses of your representation, abandoned to such hands, make every quack a doctor, and every fool a philosopher. Sir, it is the excellence of our constitution that it contains in itself the seeds of its own reformation; and to this excellence I attribute its duration. Other countries have preserved abuses until they accumulated, and were finally levelied but with the establishments themselves, by the deluge of anarchy, instead of being removed by reformation. You yourselves to a degree were sensible of this, and have inade reforms in the executive and in the judicial branches; but in the representation you however have made none; and without reforms in the latter, you will have made none of any great effect in the former; for until the present representation is reformed, your bench of justice, your executive power, your house of peers, will be from time to time, as they have been, contaminated, by sacrificing the first to the application of the boroughmonger; by modelling the second merely to gratify the same boroughmonger; and by the sale of the peerage for the boroughmonger, to the disgrace of one house, and the corruption of both. So strongly am I of this opinion, that I imagine with a reform in the abuse of representation, all the other abuses would be quelled; whereas without it, the reform of the other abuses will be but plausible and palliative. But, says the right honourable baronet, is not this reform a step to a succession of innovation? He goes farther; he says, does it not lead to a personal representation? to which I directly answer, it leads from personal representation, not to it; it ascertains representation to property, and to the propertied community; and whatever force, weight, influence, or authority both possess, unites them against the attempt in favour of personal reprəsentation.

* ir II. Langrishe.

Freeholders, leascholders, and all resident trading interests, are now in the struggle of our parliamentary constitution spectators; they would then be parties. They now enjoy a power of returning one-fifth of the House, and therefore are little interested for it; and they may have a speculation on the interest that might arise to them on the throwing up that fifth, and dividing the whole with the population; therefore some of them may be parties against it; but if they had the whole of the return, they would then be the proprietors, and they would defend the parliamentary constitution against innovation, with the same zeal with which the oligarch now defends his boroughs against reformation; but with this difference, that the existing parliamentary constitution would then be defended against innovation with the strength of all the property and all the propertied public; whereas it is now defended with the strength of about forty individuals, and about £200,000 rental; that is, without the strength of population or of property: and it is a decided proof of its weakness, that the boroughmongers could not now defend it without the influence of government; and a further proof of its weakness is the proposal of a plan of personal representation. Sir, could such a monster be offered as a proposal, that the persons who receive alms should vote the taxes, if there was not another monster much less misproportioned, but a monster notwithstanding, in the existing constitution, where a few individuals, as little the property of the country as its population, vote those taxes? It follows from what I have said, that the best method of securing the parliamentary constitution is to emoody in its support the mass of property, which will be generally found to include the mass of talents; and that the worst way of securing your parliamentary constitution is to rest it on oligarchy-oligarchy! that is a bad form of government; oligarchy! that is always a weak one.

But, says the right honourable baronet, France! Take warning from France. If France is to be a lesson, take the whole of that lesson; if her frantic convention is to be a monitress against the vices of a republic, let the causes which produced that convention be an admonition against the abuses of monarchy. France would reform nothing until abuses accumulated, and government was swept away in the deluge; until an armed force redressed the state, and then, as will be generally the case, united on becoming the government. It was not a progress from reformation to innovation, but from one modification of a military government, that is, of one anarchy to another. In principle, therefore, the case of France does not apply; in policy still less; for sure I am, if there is an attempt