transfer the property, and annex it once more to the power in their own persons. Give them your power, and they will give themselves your property. Of such a representation as this plan would provide, the first ordinance would be robbery, accompanied with the circumstance incidental to robbery-murder. Such we have seen in France in a similar experiment. There were two models for those who undertook to reform the legislature the principles of the British constitution with all its prosperity-the confusions of the French with all its massacres. Deliberately have the authors of the plan of personal representation preferred the latter! Their plan, at another time, had been only evidence of utter incapacity; at this, and with the circumstance of its most active circulation, it is a proof of the worst intentions: their plan is an elementary French constitution; as such I would resist it: as such, as long as there is spirit or common sense in the kingdom, we will all and for ever resist it. But though the perpetration of the design you may defy, yet the mischief of the attempt you must acknowledge. It has thrown back for the present the chance of any rational improvement in the representation of the people, and has betrayed a good reform to the hopes of a shabby insurrection. There are two characters equally enemies to the reform of parliament, and equally enemies to the government -the leveller of the constitution, and the friend of its abuses: they take different roads to arrive at the same end. The levellers propose to subvert the king and parliamentary constitution by a rank and unqualified democracy-the friends of its abuses propose to support the king and buy the parliament, and in the end to overset both, by a rank and an avowed corruption. They are both incendiaries; the one would destroy government to pay his court to liberty; the other would destroy liberty to pay his court to government; but the liberty of the one would be confusion, and the government of the other would be pollution. Thus these opposite and bad characters would meet at last on the ground of their common mischief, the ruins of the best regulations that ever distinguished human wisdom, those that limit the power of the Crown, and those that restrain the impetuosity of the people.

Adverting to YOUR constitution with particular care, I find in its present defective state of representation, we have neither representation of property, nor of any proportion of property; it appeared that less than ninety, but in fact, I believe about forty, individuals return a vast majority of the House of Commons. Of property it will be found that those persons who return that majority (it is, I believe, two-thirds) have not an annual income of £300,000, while they give and grant above £3,000,000—that is, the taxes they

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give are ten times, and the property they tax is infinitely greater than the property they represent. This constitution of disproportion, this representation of person, not property, of the persons of a few individuals, is less defensible when you look to its origin. I have heard of the antiquity of borough representation in Ireland— it is a gross and monstrous imposition; this borough representation is upstart, the greater part of which was created by James I., for the known and professed purpose of modelling parliament. Hear the account of that project in Ireland! Chief-Baron Gilbert says: "The constitution of boroughs did not arise from burgage-tenures as in England, but from concessions from the King to send members created in later times, when, by securing an interest in such towns, proper representatives to serve the turn of the court were sent to parliament". In Leland, you find them described as follows: number of new boroughs, most of them inconsiderable, and many too poor to afford wages to representatives, must be entirely devoted to government, and must return its creatures and dependents; such an accesion of power could not fail to encourage administration to pursue the dictates of its passions and resentments". The persons returned were-whom?-clerks, attorneys, and servants of the Lord Deputy; there is the sacred model!

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But, say gentlemen, the boroughs have in their operation done prodigies! one great operation has been to tax the country at large for places and pensions for borough representatives. See how the constitution, by borough and not representation, worked previous to the Revolution: it scarcely worked at all. Of the last century, near eighty-five years at different intervals passed without a parliament; from 1585 to 1612, that is, twenty-seven years, no parliament; from 1615 to 1634, nineteen years, no parliament; from 1648 to 1661, thirteen years, no parliament; from 1666 to 1692, that is twenty-six years, no parliament. Before the Revolution, it thus appears, that with the rights and the name, Ireland had not the possession of a parliamentary constitution; and it will appear, since the Revolution, she had no constitutional parliament. From 1692 to 1768, near seventy years, almost two-thirds of a century, the tenure was during the life of the King; since that time of limitation of the term, there have been two reforms in the essence of parliament, but reforms which I shall distinguish from the constitutional reform desired in the bill, by the appellation of antireforms. The first anti-reform procured by the treasury, was the creation of a number of new parliamentary provisions, in the years 1769, 1770, and 1771, for the purpose of creating representatives

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of the minister to counteract and counterbalance the representatives of the aristocracy; this anti-reform, or modelling of the legislature, was emphatically described and authoritatively confessed by a memorable declaration and scandalous justification; and the government was said to have paid for defeating the aristocratic influence a sum of half a million- a sum which would have bought fifty boroughs to be open to the people, and which the people were declared to have paid to procure a certain number of members in parliament to represent the minister.

The second period of anti-reformn was in 1789, when the same sum was declared as likely to be expended for the same purpose-for the purpose of buying more representatives of the then minister, to counteract the remaining strength of the representatives of the aristocracy; that is, when fifteen new parliamentary provisions were created to procure fifteen new ministerial representatives. Here is the other half million; and here are two anti-reforms, which have cost the nation as much as would buy one hundred boroughs, that is, all the boroughs; which (the fifteen new court representatives o. 1789 being added to those of 1769, or about that period, and to the gradual additions since) make altogether from forty to fifty new additional representatives of administration, which is a number nearly equal to all the knights of the shire.

I have heard the word innovation. Would they who exclaim thus, call forty additional members to the counties innovation, and forty additional members to the ministers none? Is the extent of the principle of representation to more county members innovation, and the subversion of that principle in the instances I speak of none? Is a fuller and fairer representation of property on the principles of the constitution, innovation, and a fuller representation of the treasury none? The question is not now, whether you will admit the idea of a reform of parliament, but, having admitted and submitted to innovation in the shape of abuse, whether you will not now counteract that abuse in the shape of reformation? Gentleinen speak of a fixed constitution. Sir, these boroughs are not a fixed constitution, but floating property; a provision for younger children, a payment for debts, and a mortgage on the treasury for the family of the proprietor. The question is, then, whether a property which is now at market, shall be bought by individuals or opened to the people?-whether the minister shall, from time to time, buy such portions of your constitu tion as shall secure him at all times a majority against the people or a reform shall so control that influence, as to secure to the people the chance of a majority in their own House of Parliament.

When I say this is a question, I am in error; it can be no question, or, at least, this is the only assembly in which it could be a question. Let not gentlemen complain of stirring the subject; they stirred, they decided the subject; they who negotiated the half million; they who created, in 1789, the memorable increase of court representation; they who confessed the half million; and they who devised the sale of the peerage. We are only the advocates for a reform of parliament, but they are the evidence of its necessity; they do not draw that conclusion themselves; no, but they are the evidences that force the conclusion upon you.

Gentlemen have talked of innovation; have they considered the date of boroughs when they talk in this manner? Many of these boroughs were at first free boroughs, perhaps one half of the whole was free by charter, and have been made close boroughs by its violation, and are in law extinct, and their members now sit in this House in the face of the law of the land as well as the principles of the constitution. We moved to go last session into an examination, but gentlemen were afraid; we wish to go now into an examination, and if they will venture, we have reason to think we can how you that many of those boroughs are dead in law, and their members sit here by intrusion.

We conclude this head by three observations: 1st, That in Ireland the erection of the majority of the boroughs was with a view to subvert her parliamentary constitution. 2nd, That the use made of those boroughs since, by the sale of peerages, and by the procuring at each general election portions of the parliament, has tended to undermine that constitution. 3rd, That a great part of those boroughs have at this moment no existence in law. therefore, conclude with Locke and Bolingbroke:

We,

"Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state; thus people, riches, trade, power, change their stations, flourishing, mighty cities come to ruin, and prove in time neglected, desolate corners; whilst other unfrequented places grow into populous countries, filled with wealth and inhabitants. But things not always changing equally, and private interest often keeping up customs and privileges when the reasons of them are ceased, it often comes to pass, that in governments where part of the legislature consists of representatives chosen by the people. that in tract of time this representation becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the reasons it was at first established upon. To what gross absurdities the following of custom, when reason has left it, may lead, we may be satisfied, when we see the bare name of a

town, of which there remain not so much as the ruins, where scarce so much housing as a sheep-cot, or more inhabitants than a shepherd, are to be found, send as many representatives to the grand assembly of law-makers as a whole county, numerous in people and powerful in riches; this strangers stand amazed at, and every one must confess needs a remedy".

Speaking of the Revolution, Lord Bolingbroke adds:

"If it had been such, with respect to the elections of members to serve in parliament, these elections might have been drawn back to the ancient principle on which they had been established; and the tale of property which was followed anciently, and was perverted by innumerable changes that length of time produced, might have been restored; by which the communities to whom the right of electing was trusted, as well as the qualification of the electors and the elected, might have been settled in proportion to the present state of things. Such a remedy might have wrought a radical cure to the evil that threatens our constitution; whereas it is much to be apprehended, even from experience, that all others are merely palliative; and yet the palliative must be employed, no doubt, till the specific can be procured".

ANTI-UNION SPEECHES.

January 15, 1800.

MR. EGAN had just risen to speak, when Mr. Grattan entered the House, supported (in consequence of illness) by Mr. W. B. Ponsonby aud Mr. Arthur Moore. He took the oaths and his seat, and after Mr. Egan had concluded, in consequence of illness being obliged to speak sitting, he addressed the House as follows:

SIR, The gentleman who spoke last but one (Mr. Fox) has spoken the pamphlet of the English minister-I answer that minister. He has published two celebrated productions, in both of which he declares his intolerance of the constitution of Ireland. He concurs with the men whom he has hanged, in thinking the constitution a

*The reporters who have transmitted the account of the debates of the day, state, "Never was beheld a scene more solemn; an indescribable emotion seized the House and gallery, and every heart heaved in tributary pulsation to the name, the virtues, and the return to parliament of the founder of the constitu tion of 1782; the existence of which was then the subject of debate".