because they cease to be anything. Hence, according to him, thei brilliant expectation: "You were", say his advocates, and so imports his argument, "before the Union as three to one, you will be by the Union as one to four”. Thus he founds their hopes of political power on the extinction of physical consequence, and makes the inanity of their body and the nonentity of their country the pillars of their future ambition.

The Catholics of the city of Dublin have come forth in support of the constitution. I rejoice at it. They have answered their enemics by the best possible answer-by services. Such answer is more than refutation-it is triumph. The man who supports and preserves parliament qualifies; the path of glory leads on to privilege; "enjoy with me, if you please; without me, if you be illiberal; but by me certainly; and at all events enjoy the parliamentary constitution of your country". This is to defend the tower, this is to leap upon the wreck, this is to sit beside the country in her sick bed; if she recover, there is a long and bright order of days before her, and the Catholics will have contributed to that event; if she perish, they will have done their utmost to save her: they will have done as an honest man ought in such an extreme case-they will have flung out their last setting glories, and sunk with their country.

The minister, by his first plans, as detailed by his advocates, not only banished the Catholics from parliament, but banished the Protestants from it likewise, for he banished them from a due representation therein; he struck off one half of the county representatives, and preserved the portion of boroughs as two to one. Thus he disposed of the question of Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform, by getting rid of both for ever; thus did he build his first plan of Union upon the abuses both of church and state, and reformed neither; religious monopoly or borough monopoly, he continued to exclude the Catholic from parliament; and he continued to shut out both Protestant and Catholic from a due and effectual parliamentary representation. He shut out Protestant ascendency as well as Catholic participation; and in the place of both, constituted borough ascendency in perpetual abuse and dominion. He reformed the British Parliament by nearly sixty Irish borough members; he reformed the Irish Parliament by 558 English and Scotch members; and on this mutual misrepresentation, constituted an imperial legislature. There was no great effort of ability in all this; much felicity of mischief, no expenditure either of time or talent. There was nothing in the scheme which was

grand, nothing which was deep, nothing which was comprehensive; ho demolished an old institution at the same time that he preserved old abuses, and put himself at their head, and entailed them on posterity, like a common disorder, to be continued through what he calls a parental parliament. Such a plan was too desperate, as far as relates to the proportion of counties and boroughs. I understand it is in part abandoned, and well it may, because, whether these representatives be in a greater or lesser proportion borough members, they will be the host of administration, and not the representatives of the people. He takes one hundred members, many of whom are removed by the nature of their election from the influence of representation; all of whom, by removal from their country, are withdrawn from that of sympathy, from that of opinion. He changes the sphere, not only of their action, but of their character and of their sensations. How came the Irish Parliament, with all its borough members, in 1779, to demand a free trade-in 1782, to demand a free constitution? Because it sat in Ireland; because they sat in their own country; and because at that time they had a country; because, however influenced as many of its members were by places, however uninfluenced as many of its members were by popular representation, yet were they influenced by Irish sympathy. They did not like to meet every hour faces that looked shame upon them; they did not like to stand in the sphere of their own infamy; thus they acted as the Irish absentee at the very same time did not act; they saved the country because they lived in it, as the others abandoned the country because they lived out of it.

I will not say that one hundred Irish gentlemen will act ill, wher any man would act well; but never was there a situation in which they had so much temptation to act ill, and so little to act well great expense and consequent distresses; no support from the voice of an Irish public; no check; they will be in situation a sort of gentlemen of the empire; that is to say, gentlemen at large, absent from one country, and unelected by the other-suspended between both, and belonging to neither. The sagacious English Secretary of State has foretold this: "What advantage", says he, "will it be to the talents of Ireland, this opportunity in the British empire thus opened?" That is what we dread. The market of St. Stephen opened to the individual, and the talents of the country, like its property, dragged from the kingdom of Ireland to be sold in London; these men, from their situation (man is the child of situation), their native honour may struggle; but from their situation, they will be adventurers of the most expensive kind; adventurers

with pretensions, dressed and sold, as it were, in the shrouds and graveclothes of the Irish Parliament, and playing for hire their trickc on her tomb, the only repository the minister will allow to an Irish constitution, the image of degradation, and the representatives of nothing.

Corne, he has done much; he has destroyed one constitution; he has corrupted another; and this corrupted constitution he calls a parental representation. I congratulate the country on the new baptism of what was once called the representative body of the nation. Instead of the plain, august language of the constitution, we are here saluted with the novel and barbaric phraseology of empire. With this change of name we perceive a transfer of obligation, converting the duty of the delegate into the duty of the constituent, and the inheritance of the people into the inheritance of their trustees.

Well, this assembly, this Imperial Parliament, what are its elements? Irish absentees, who have forsaken their country, and a British Parliament that took away the constitution. Does he say that such a parliament will have no prejudices against Ireland? Let him look to his speeches; a capital understanding, a comprehensive knowledge, and a transcendent eloquence; hear him with all these powers speak on the subject of Ireland, whether it be the conduct of her administration, the character of her people, her commerce, or her covenants, or her constitution, and he betrays an ignorance that would dishonour an idiot. Doc, he wish for further instances? Let him look to the speeches of his agents in Ireland; speeches made and published for the palate and prejudices of the English court: what description of men have they not traduced, what patriotic achievement have they not deprecated, what honest character have they not belied? Does he look for further instances? Let him turn to his catalogue: what notorious apostate whom he has not honoured? what impudent defamer of the rights and character of Ireland that he has not advanced? On the other hand, what man that made a stand for her liberties whom he has not dismissed? Mr. Fitzgerald, Sir John Parnell, who had supported his government long, refused to abandon their country and their honour, and were immediately told they were no longer fit for the service of government. Mr. Foster, who had supported his administration long, held up his shield for that parliament of which he is the natural advocate, and was immediately honoured by the enmity of the court, and a personal attack on his character and consistency.

Lord Fitzwilliam, an Englishman, a friend to the war, $ strenuous advocate for order and regular government, with a

character that is purity itself, entertained for Ireland a fatal affection, and by that one offence, cancelled all his long and splendid catalogue of virtues, and was dismissed accordingly.

A legislature, the parent of both countries, he talks of; a legislature, as far as relates to Ireland, free from the influence of vicinity, of sympathy. The Isle of Man is all that (free from the influence of opinion, free from the influence of duty, directed by prejudices, and unincumbered by knowledge). In order to judge what this parental legislature would be, let us consider what the British Parliament has been, and let us compare that Parliament, for this purpose, with the legislature of Ireland. In this comparison I do not mean to approve of all the parliaments that have sat in Ireland: I left the former parliament, because I condemned its proceedings; but I argue not like the minister, from the misconduct of one parliament against the being of parliament itself. I value that parliamentary constitution by the average of its benefits; and I affirm, that the blessings procured by the Irish Parliament in the last twenty years, are greater than all the blessings afforded by British Parliaments to Ireland for the last century; greater even than the mischiefs inflicted on Ireland by British Parliaments; greater than all the blessings procured by those parliaments for their own country within that period. Within that time the legislatures of England lost an empire, and the legislature of Ireland recovered a constitution.

Well, we have done with this parental parliament; and now we come to the bribes which he holds out. And, first, he begins with the church. To the Protestant church he promises perpetual security; to the Catholic church his advocates promise eventual salary; and both hold out to the former commutation of tithes.

With respect to the Protestant church, whatever may be his wishes in favour of its duration, he takes the strongest measures to accomplish its destruction; for he attempts to disgrace it to all eternity. He is employing, or his agents are employing, several o. its members to negotiate away the constitution, and to mendicate addresses transferring to another country the parliament and legislative power of their own; disfranchising the very people by whom the church is fed, and deserting the holy mission of God to fulfil this profligate mission of the minister. Give up your country, says the minister; give up your character, and be immortal. So said Charles the First to his church when he prostituted the Gospel, and regimented the clergy into battalions against the constitution, and overturned the church by its own infamy.

At the same time that the minister endeavours to take away the

authority of one church, his advocates tell you that he proposes to give salaries to another; that is, they tell you that he proposes to bribe the Catholic clergy, if they will betray the constitution. In whatever form of religion our pious court contemplates the Almighty, t ever occurs to convert Him to some diabolical purpose. The Catholics had been accused pretty liberally of disloyalty by those very advocates who now seem to think it proper to reward their imputed treasons against the king, provided they shall be followed up by real treasons against the people. I do not believe, I never did believe, the general charges made against the Catholics; I do not dispute, I never did dispute, the propriety of giving salaries to their clergy; but it should be salaries, not bribes-salaries for the exercise of their religious duty, and not wages for the practice of political apostacy. According to this plan, the Catholic religion, it would seem, disqualified its followers to receive the blessings of the constitution; but the priest's hostilities to that constitution qualify him to receive a salary for the exercise of that very religion which is at once punished by civil disability and encouraged by ecclesiastical provision; as good Catholics they are disqualified, and as bad citizens they are to be rewarded.

The minister proceeds: he proposes his third bribe, namely, the abolition of tithes. You observe, such a proposal does not seem to form part of bis Union, but is an offer kept back to be regulated, modified, and qualified, when the Union is passed, and the consideration is given. I approve of a modus as a compensation for tithe, but I do not approve of it as a compensation for parliament; when I proposed that measure, and was opposed by men by whom I could only be opposed, and could not be answered, I was told by the king's ministers that commutation of tithe was the overthrow of the church. Couple the project of the minister now with the argument of his agents then, and the combined idea amounts to this, that it is prudent to overturn the church, provided at the same time you overturn the constitution; but the fact is, that the argument at that time was false, and the proposal at this time is fallacious; the argument had for its object personal calumny; and the proposal, national extinction.

The minister has not done with bribes; whatever economy he shows in argument, here he has been generous in the extreme. Parson, priest (I think one of his advocates hints the Presbyterians) are not forgotten; and now the mercantile body are all to be bribed, that all may be ruined. He holds out commercial benefits for political annihilation; he offers you an abundance of capital, but first bi