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honour; ingenuous young men, they have spoken with unsophisticated feeling and the native honesty of good sense. The question is not now such as occupied you of old, not old Poynings, not peculation, not plunder, not an embargo, not a Catholic bill, not a reform billIt is your being-it is more,—it is your life to come, whether you will go with the Castle at your head to the tomb of Charlemont and the volunteers, and erase his epitaph; or whether your children shall go to your graves, saying: A venal, a military court, attacked the liberties of the Irish, and here lie the bones of the honourable dead men who saved their country! Such an epitaph is a nobility which the King cannot give his slaves; it is a glory which the crown sannot give the King.

INVECTIVE AGAINST CORRY.

February 14, 1800.

HAS the gentleman done? Has he completely done? He was unparliamentary from the beginning to the end of his speech. There was scarce a word he uttered that was not a violation of the privileges of the House; but I did not call him to order—why? because the limited talents of some men render it impossible for them to be severe without being unparliamentary. But before I sit down I shall show him how to be severe and parliamentary at the same time. On any other occasion I should think myself justifiable in treating with silent contempt anything which might fall from that honourable member; but there are times when the insignificance of the accuser is lost in the magnitude of the accusation. I know the difficulty the honourable gentleman laboured under when he attacked me, conscious that, on a comparative view of our characters, public and private, there is nothing he could say which would injure me. The public would not believe the charge. I despise the falsehood. such a charge were made by an honest man, I would answer it in the manner I shall do before I sit down. But I shall first reply to it when not made by an honest man.

If

The right honourable gentlemen has called me 66 an unimpeached traitor." I ask, why not "traitor," unqualified by any epithet? I will tell him; it was because he dare not. It was the act of a coward, who raises his aim to strike. but has not courage to give the

blow. I will not call him villain, because it would be unparliamentary, and he is a privy counsellor. I will not call him fool, because he happens to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. But I say he is one who has abused the privilege of parliament and freedom of debate to the uttering language, which, if spoken out of the House, I should answer only with a blow. I care not how high his situation, how low his character, how contemptible his speech; whether a privy counsellor or a parasite, my answer would be a blow. He has charged me with being connected with the rebels: the charge is utterly, totally, and meanly false. Does the honourable gentleman rely on the report of the House of Lords for the foundation or his assertion? If he does, I can prove to the committee there was a physical impossibility of that report being true. But I scorn to

answer any man for my conduct, whether he be a political coxcomb, or whether he brought himself into power by a false glare of courage or not. I scorn to answer any wizard of the Castle throwing himself into fantastical airs. But if an honourable and independent man were to make a charge against me, I would say: "You charge me with having an intercourse with the rebels, and you found your charge upon what is said to have appeared before a committee of the Lords. Sir, the report of that committee is totally and egregiously irregular". I will read a letter from Mr. Nelson, who had been examined before that committee; it states that what the report represents him as having spoken, is not what he said. [Mr. Grattan here read a letter from Mr. Nelson, denying that he had any connec tion with Mr. Grattan as charged in the report; and concluding by saying, "never was misrepresentation more vile than that put into my mouth by the report".]

From the situation that I held, and from the connections I had in the city of Dublin, it was necessary for me to hold intercourse with various descriptions of persons. The right honourable member might as well have been charged with a participation in the guilt of those traitors; for he had communicated with some of those very persons on the subject of parliamentary reform. The Irish government, too, were in communication with some of them.

The right honourable member has told me I deserted a profession where wealth and station were the reward of industry and talent. If I mistake not, that gentleman endeavoured to obtain those rewards by the same means; but he soon deserted the occupation of a barrister for those of a parasite and pander. He fled from the labour of study to flatter at the table of the great. He found the lord's parlour a better sphere for his exertions than the hall of the Four

Courts; the house of a great man a more convenient way to powe and to place; and that it was easier for a statesman of middling talents to sell his friends, than for a lawyer of no talents to sell his clients.

For myself, whatever corporate or other bodies have said or done to me, I from the bottom of my heart forgive them. I feel I have done too much for my country to be vexed at them. I would rather that they should not feel or acknowledge what I have done for them, and call me traitor, than have reason to say I sold them. I will always defend myself against the assassin; but with large bodies it is different. To the people I will bow: they may be my enemy-I never shall be theirs.

At the emancipation of Ireland, in 1782, I took a leading part in the foundation of that constitution which is now endeavoured to be destroyed. Of that constitution I was the author; in that constitution I glory; and for it the honourable gentleman should bestow praise, not invent calumny. Notwithstanding my weak state of body, I come to give my last testimony against this Union, so fatal to the liberties and interests of my country. I come to make common cause with these honourable and virtuous gentlemen around me; to try and save the constitution; or if not save the constitution, at least to save our characters, and remove from our graves the foul disgrace of standing apart while a deadly blow is aimed at the independence of our country.

The right honourable gentleman says I fled from the country after exciting rebellion, and that I have returned to raise another. No such thing. The charge is false. The civil war had not commenced when I left the kingdom; and I could not have returned without taking a part. On the one side there was the camp of the rebel; on the other, the camp of the minister, a greater traitor than that rebel. The stronghold of the constitution was nowhere to be found. I agree that the rebel who rises against the government should have suffered; but I missed on the scaffold the right honourable gentleman. Two desperate parties were in arms against the constitution. The right bonourable gentleman belonged to one of those parties, and deserved death. I could not join the rebel-I could not join the government I could not join torture-I could not join half-hanging -I could not join free quarter-I could take part with neither. I was therefore absent from a scene where I could not be active without self-reproach, nor indifferent with safety.

Many honourable gentlemen thought differently from me: I respect their opinions, but I keep my own; and I think now, as I thought then, that the treason of the minister against the liberties

of the people was infinitely worse than the rebellion of the people against the minister.

I have returned, not as the right honourable member has said, to raise another storm-I have returned to discharge an honourable debt of gratitude to my country, that conferred a great reward for past services, which, I am proud to say, was not greater than my desert. I have returned to protect that constitution, of which I was the parent and the founder, from the assassination of such men as the honourable gentleman and his unworthy associates. They are corrupt they are seditious-and they, at this very moment, are in a conspiracy against their country. I have returned to refute a libel, as false as it is malicious, given to the public under the appellation of a report of the committee of the Lords. Here I stand ready for impeachment or trial: I dare accusation. I defy the honourable gentleman; I defy the government; I defy their whole phalanx : let them come forth. I tell the ministers I will neither give them quarter nor take it. I am here to lay the shattered remains of my constitution on the floor of this Ilouse in defence of the liberties of my country.

ANTI-UNION SPEECHIES.
March 19, 1800.

SIR,-The plan of Union has detailed itself. Still it is the abolition of the Irish Parliament, and the transfer of legislation: on the part of this House a breach of trust, and on the part of the minister of Engiand a breach of faith. The advocates for Union have failed in everything: first, in their attempt to prove the competency of parlia ment to destroy the old, and to imposs a new constitution against the sense of the people. They have quoted the instance of Scotland; but there was no compact between England and Scotland, such as our compact of 1782; and the sense of the Scotch electors was taken on the subject of Union by a dissolution of the Scotch Parlianent; so that the strength of the case of Scotland is the desideraum of the case of Ireland. They have attempted to produce instanes; namely, the succession of the crown and the change of religion, s if it were the same thing to make law and to dissolve the law aker; as if the frame of the constitution were as much the creature or Aw as the establishments are the creature of law, and law the creature the law-maker. In these instances the families and persons

administering the constitution were changed, but the frame of the constitution continued; the principle on which they have argued would reduce human right to the two great questions of power and corruption, in breach of trust and contempt of justice. They have attempted to produce authority; namely, the parliaments of both countries as if, in a question between two parties, the parliament and the people, the ipse dixit of the parliament decided the point. However, the Parliament of Ireland have decided the point, and they have decided the point against their power; for they declared in 1782, unanimously, both Houses, that the right of the people of Ireland to be subject to no laws but those made by King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland exclusively, was the ancient inheritance of the realm, which they could not surrender. They have attempted to quote authorities: Blackstone, who upon a constitutional subject regarding Ireland, is no authority; for he declared the Parliament of England competent to make laws for this country: Lord Somers, who has said nothing on the subject: and Lord Coke, who, if he has spoken decisively upon the subject, has spoken against them; for he has said that one parliament cannot take away the power of future parliaments of course cannot take away their existence. They \have been answered by an authority greater than all they have attempted to quote, the great writer of the Revolution, Mr. Locke, whose express doctrine, and whose repeated declarations, together with the great principle on which his Essay is founded, go to establish that the legislature is a thing in trust, and that the trustees have not in themselves authority to surrender or transfer the same. They have been answered by the great political act of the English nation, as well as by her great political author, namely, the Revolution, where the society, or a large description thereof, authorised by the society, did interfere in consequence of a breach of trust, adjudged to be a violation of the fundamental principles of the constitution, and therefore an abdication of the government. They have been answered by original contract, declared and voted at that time to be the bond between the people and the government; and they have been further answered by this necessary inference, arising from their doctrine, that, according to their doctrine, should the government of France, Buonaparte for instance, be able to corrupt a majority of the two Houses of the British Parliament, that majority is competent to transfer the powers of the British legislature to Paris In their attempts to prove this measure to be the sense of the people, they have been equally unfortunate. They relied on that sense at first as their ground of Union. See their debates of the

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