By her produce. When you propose that she should desert or even diminish her husbandry, you shake your funded security. Again, you are aware, that in rent to absentees, Ireland pays not less than £2,000,000 annually, and pays it out of her produce; when you propose to diminish, when you do not propose to augment that produce, you shake your landed security. Again, in the respective traffic of the two countries, the account stands so: Ireland pays to Great Britain for commodities, at the current price, a large sum; about £4,500,000 for interest; for the rents of absentees £2,000,000; altogether, about £16,000,000 annually. The exportation of Ireland is about £17,000,000, of which £2,900,000 is the export of corn. When you propose to diminish her produce in corn, nay when you do not propose to increase it, you propose that she should not pay you that balance. Again, are you unapprised that the population of Ireland is not less than 6,000,000, and that a great proportion of that number are people connected with tillage? If you go out of tillage, what will you do with that population? Will you, with the opposers of this measure, consign that people to famine and to tumult, or, with the supporters of the measure, hand them over to plenty and to peace? Again, in addition to these reflections, will you consider, that the question before you is not merely a means of subsistence, but a measure of empire? England clothes Ireland, Ireland feeds England, and both live with one another and by one another; the two nations are bound together by law; but there is something stronger than law; they are grappled together by the iron fangs of necessity, and not only legally united, but physically identified; and this is the very soul of your connexion. In the relationship of the two countries, mutual want is public concord; that intercourse which makes them physically dependent on one another, makes them physically independent of their enemies, and thus forms the strength of your empire as well as its abundance.

Sir, I am for this resolution; I am for it, because it is decisive, not ambiguous; because 80s. is a preference which the farmer will understand; do not send him to your averages; for, while you perplex the farmer with your calculations, the plan is at a stand. Sir, I am for the measure, because it gives strength to your funds, credit to your landed interest, identification to the people of the respective countries, and physical independence on the foreigner. I am for it, because it is an increase of your ways and means; because it promises plenty, where alone it can be relied on; namely, in your home market, and, with that plenty, cheapness, but that cheapness which is steady, and which pays your farmer while it feeds your manufac

turer, instead of that extravagant fluctuation which alternately ruins both; and I am for this measure, because it secures us against the policy suggested by its opponents, and which is reducible to three monstrous propositions-an abandonment of tillage; a relinquishment of your power to supply your own consumption; and a depen dence on foreign markets for bread.

DOWNFALL OF BUONAPARTE.

May 25, 1815.

SIR, I sincerely sympathise with the honourable gentleman who spoke last in his anxiety on this important question; and my solici tude is increased by a knowledge that I differ in opinion from my oldest political friends. I have further to contend against the additional weight given to the arguments of the noble lord who moved the amendment, by the purity of his mind, the soundness of his judgment, and the elevation of his rank. I agree with my honourable friends in thinking that we ought not to impose a government upon France. I agree with them in deprecating the evil of war; but I deprecate still more the double evil of a peace without securities, and a war without allies. Sir, I wish it was a question between peace and war; but, unfortunately for the country, very painfully to us, and most injuriously to all ranks of men, peace is not in our option; and the real question is, whether we shall go to war when our allies are assembled, or fight the battle when those allies shall be dissipated?

Sir, the French government is war; it is a stratocracy, elective, aggressive, and predatory; her armies live to fight, and fight to live; their constitution is essentially war, and the object of that war the conquest of Europe. What such a person as Buonaparte at the head of such a constitution will do, you may judge by what he has done; and, first, he took possession of the greater part of Europe; he made his son King of Rome; he made his son in-law Viceroy of Italy; he made his brother King of Holland; he made his brother-in-law King of Naples; he imprisoned the King of Spain; he banished the Regent of Portugal, and formed his plan to take possession of the crown of England. England had checked his designs; her trident had stirred up his empire from its foundation; he complained of her tyranny at sea; but it was her power at

sea which arrested his tyranny on land-the navy of England saveed Europe. Knowing this, he knew the conquest of England became necessary for the accomplishment of the conquest of Europe, and the destruction of her marine necessary for the conquest of England. Accordingly, besides raising an ariny of 60,000 men for the invasion of England, he applied himself to the destruction of her commerce, the foundation of her naval power. In pursuit of this object, and on his plan of a western empire, he couceived, and in part executed, the design of consigning to plunder and destruction the vast regions of Russia; he quits the genial clime of the temperate zone; he bursts through the narrow limits of an immense empire; he abandons comfort and security, and he hurries to the pole, to hazard thein all, and with them the companions of his victories, and the fame and fruits of his crimes and his talents, on speculation of leaving in Europe, throughout the whole of its extent, no one free or independent nation. To oppose this huge conception of mischief and despotism, the great potentate of the north, from his gloomy recesses advances to defend himself against the voracity of ambition amid the sterility of his empire. Ambition is omnivorous—it feasts on famine and sheds tons of blood, that it may starve in ice, in order to commit a robbery on desolation. The power of the north, I say, joins another prince, whom Buonaparte had deprived of almost the whole of his authority, the King of Prussia, and then another potentate, whom Buonaparte had deprived of the principal part of his dominions, the Emperor of Austria. These three powers, physical causes, final justice, the influence of your victories in Spain and Portugal, and the spirit given to Europe by the achievements and renown of your great commander [the Duke of Wellington], together with the precipitation of his own ambition, combine to accomplish his destruction. Buonaparte is conquered. He who said: "I will be like the Most High": he who smote the nations with a continual stroke-this short-lived son of the morning, Lucifer, falls, and the Earth is at rest; the phantom of royalty passes on to nothing, and the three kings to the gates of Paris; there they stand, the late victims of his ambition, and now the disposers of his destiny and the masters of his empire; without provocation he had gone to their countries with fire and sword; with the greatest provocation they come to his country with life and liberty; they do an act unparallelled in the annals of history, such as nor envy, nor time, nor malice, nor prejudice, nor ingratitude can efface; they give to his subjects liberty, and to himself life and royalty. This is greater than conquest! The present race must confess their virtues, and ages to come must

crown their monuments, and place them above herocs and kings in glory everlasting.

When Buonaparte states the conditions of the treaty of Fontainebleau are not performed, he forgets one of them, namely, the condition by which he lives. It is very true there was a mixture of policy and prudence in this measure; but it was a great act of magnanimity notwithstanding, and it is not in Providence to turn such an act to your disadvantage. With respect to the other act, the mercy shown to his people, I have underrated it; the allies did not give liberty to France, they enabled her to give a constitution to herself, a better constitution than that which, with much laboriousness and circumspection, and deliberation, and procrastination, the philosophers fabricated, when the Jacobins trampled down the flimsy work, murdered the vain philosophers, drove out the crazy reformers, and remained masters of the field in the triumph of superior anarchy and confusion; better than that, I say, which the Jacobin destroyed, better than that which he afterwards formed, with some method in his madness, and more madness in his method; with such a horror of power, that in his plan of a constitution he .eft out a government, and with so many wheels that everything was in movement and nothing in concert, so that the machine took fire from its own velocity in the midst of death and mirth, with images emblematic of the public disorder, goddesses of reason turned fool, and of liberty turned fury. At length the French found their advantage in adopting the sober and unaffected security of King, Lords, and Commons, on the idea of that form of government which your ancestors procured by their firmness, and maintained by their discretion. The people had attempted to give the French liberty, and had failed; the wise men (so her philosophers called themselves) had attempted to give liberty to France, and had failed; it remained for the extraordinary destiny of the French to receive their free constitution from kings. This constitution Buonaparte has destroyed, together with the treaty of Fontainebleau, and having broken both, desires your confidence; Russia confided, and was deceived; Austria confided, and was deceived. Have we forgotten the treaty of Luneville, and his abominable conduct to the Swiss? Spain and other nations of Europe confided, and all were deceived. During the whole of this time he was charging on England the continuation of the war, while he was, with uniform and universal perfidy, breaking his own treaties of peace for the purpose of renewing the war, to end it in what was worse than war itself—his conquest of Europe. But now he repents and will be faithful! he says so, but he says

the contrary also: “I protest against the validity of the treaty of Fontainebleau; it was not done with the consent of the people; I protest against everything done in my absence; see my speech 10 the army and people; see the speech of my council to me". The treaty of Paris was done in his absence; by that treaty were returned the French colonies and prisoners: thus he takes life and empire from the treaty of Fontainebleau, with an original design to set it aside, and he takes prisoners and colonies from the treaty of Paris, which he afterwards sets aside also; and he musters an army, by a singular fatality, in a great measure composed of troops who owe their enlargement, and of a chief who owes his life, to the powers he fights, by the resources of France, who owes to those powers her salvation. He gives a reason for this: "Nothing is good which was done without the consent of the people" (having been deposed by that people, and elected by the army in their defiance). With such sentiments, which go not so much against this or that particular treaty as against the principles of affiance, the question is, whether, with a view to the security of Europe, you will take the faith of Napoleon, or the army of your allies ?

Gentlemen maintain, that we are not equal to the contest; that is to say, confederated Europe cannot fight France single-handed; if that be your opinion, you are conquered this moment; you are conquered in spirit: but that is not your opinion, nor was it the opinion of your ancestors; they thought, and I hope transmitted the sentiment as your birth-right, that the armies of these islands could always fight, and fight with success their own numbers; see now the numbers you are to command; by this treaty you are to have in the field what may be reckoned not less than 600,000 mer; besides that stipulated army you have at command, what may be reckoned as much more, I say you and the allies. The Emperor of Austria alone has an army of 500,000 men, of which 120,000 were sent to Italy to oppose Murat, who is now beaten; Austria is not then occupied by Murat; Prussia is not occupied by the Saxon, nor Russia by the Pole, at least not so occupied that they have not ample and redundant forces for this war; you have a general never surpassed, and allies in heart and confidence. See now Buonaparte's muster; he has lost his external dominions, and is reduced from a population of 100,000,000, to a population of 25,000,000; besides, he has lost the power of fascination, for though he may be called the subverter of kings, he has not proved to be the redresser of grievances. Switzerland has not forgotten, all Europe remembers the nature of his reformation, and that the best reform he introduced was worse than the worst government he

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