and disunion, which had so long supported it in Ireland, had for the moment disappeared. Ireland declared, and England felt, that no other policy remained, "but to do justice to a people who were otherwise determined to do justice to themselves."* The British ministry, whose infatuated counsels had lost America, and whose tardiness and insincerity with respect to Ireland had been encouraging the spirit of resistance there, were removed, and successors appointed with instructions to make such honourable concessions as were due to the services, the strength, and the just pretensions of the Irish people. The principal restrictions upon the trade of Ireland had been previously taken off. Under the Marquis of Rockingham's administration, the great leading grievance, that included in its principle so many more, was redressed. England resigned her legislative pretensions, and recognized Ireland to be a free nation.†

This signal event, so justly denominated by Mr. Burke the Irish revolution, was the work of the Irish Volunteers. Their efforts were powerfully aided by the momentary spirit which they infused into the Irish House of Commons. In many of its members, the enthusiasm vanished with the occasion; but there remained a few, whose better natures, superior to the control of accident, continued to struggle for the public good with a constancy, ability, and zeal, which sprang from within themselves. Their merits have been long since recorded: the preeminent merits of their illustrious leader, now associated with the proudest recollections of his country, require new attestation. For Mr. Grattan's most splendid panegyric, for the only one truly worthy of him, we are to look in what he has himself pronounced. His public exertions, the monuments of his genius and his worth, are preserved; his historian will have but to col

*Mr. Grattan's speech, April 19, 1780.-C.

+1782.-Several important constitutional acts were passed in Ireland during this short administration. A habeas corpus act, the repeal of the perpetual mutiny bill, the act for the independence of the judges, an act in favour of the Dissenting Protestants. A slight relaxation of the penal code had taken place in 1778.-C.

lect and refer to them, justly confiding, that as long as eloquence, patriotism, intrepidity, and uncompromising honour are valued in public men, the example of Mr. Grattan will remain the subject of lasting gratitude and praise.*

The triumph which Ireland gained in the declaration of independence was the triumph of a principle, which, however glorious it might have been to those who achieved it, failed to confer upon the nation the benefit and repose that the political philanthropist fondly anticipated. The spirit of the Parliament was exhausted in the single effort they had emancipated themselves from the control of another legislature; but no sooner was the victory obtained, than it became evident that very few of its fruits were to be shared among the people. Great domestic abuses still prevailed; the corrupt state of the legislature; its consequence, an enormous and increasing Pension List; and,

* Mr. Grattan, like other men of original genius and character, has been many times in the course of his memorable career misrepresented and reviled. The following spirited defence of him against such attacks was made in the Irish House of Commons, by his friend, Mr. Peter Burroughs, a gentleman long distinguished for his eloquence in the senate and at the bar, and for the unsuspected purity of his public and private life:"I cannot repress my indignation, at the audacious boldness of the calumny, which would asperse one of the most exalted characters which any nation ever produced; and that in a country which owes its liberty and its greatness to the energy of his exertions, and in the very house which has so often been the theatre of his glorious labours and splendid achievements. I remember that man the theme of universal panegyric-the wonder and the boast of Ireland, for his genius and his virtue. His name silenced the sceptic, upon the reality of genuine patriotism. To doubt the purity of his motives was a heresy which no tongue dared to utter. Envy was lost in admiration; and even those whose crimes he scourged, blended extorted conpraises with the murmurs of resentment. He covered our (then) unfledged constitution with the ample wings of his talents, as an eagle covers her young; like her he soared, and like her could behold the rays, whether of royal favour or royal anger, with undazzled, unintimidated eye. If, according to Demosthenes, to grow with the growth, and decay with the decline of our country, be the true criterion of a good citizen, how infinitely did this man, even in the moment of his lowest depression, surpass those upstart patriots who only become visible when their country vanishes !"-C.

† According to a table of the state of the representation of Ireland, published in 1788, out of the 300 members of the House of Commons (viz., for 32 counties, 64 knights; for seven cities, 14 citizens; for one university, two representatives; for 110 boroughs, 220 burgesses), the people returned 81, including the 64 for counties, and the patrons the remaining 219.-C.

above all, the exclusion of the Roman Catholics from the most valuable privileges of the constitution. There were many others of subordinate importance. From Mr. Curran's entrance into Parliament, he joined those whose opinion it was that these abuses should be corrected. The result of the exertions of himself and the party with which for the fourteen years that he was a senator, he acted, is shortly told. They almost uniformly failed in every measure that they brought forward or opposed. It would far exceed the limits and the objects of this work to discuss at any length the merits of these several measures, some of which continue to this day the subject of anxious controversy upon another and a greater theatre. Yet it may be observed, that the acts of the Irish legislature during the period in question afford matter, if not of a very attractive kind, at least of very solemn and important instruction. Whoever takes the pains to examine them will find how transitory, and almost valueless to a nation the glory of asserting nominal rights, if there be not diffused throughout its various classes that fund of conservative virtue and spirit, which alone can give dignity and stability to its independence, by operating as a perpetual renewal of its claims. He will find one practical and terrible example (illustrated by continued discontents and disturbances, and finally by a rebellion) of the folly of expecting that human beings, in whom the political passions have been once awakened, can be attached, or even reconciled, to the most admired form of government, by any other means, than by a real and conscientious communication of those privileges, for which they would deem it dishonorable not to thirst. For the last eighteen years of her separate existence, Ireland was in the theoretic enjoyment of the same constitution which has long made. Great Britain the wonder of other nations; but in Ireland, however boasted the acquisition, it soon appeared to be but a lifeless copy, minutely exact in external form, but wanting all the vigour, and warmth, and imparting spirit of the glorious original. The

Irish legislature, seduced by their fatal ardour for monopoly, would not see that their own emancipation had sent abroad a general taste for freedom, which it was most perilous to disappoint. Unwisely and ungenerously separating their interests and pride from those of their country, they preferred taking a weak and hostile position upon the narrow ground of exclusive privilege, instead of taking their stand, where there was ample space for the parliament and people, and for all, upon the base of the British constitution.* They affected to think that the time had not arrived when the Catholic could be trusted; as if the enjoyment of rights and confidence for a single year would not prove a more instructive school of fidelity than centuries of suspicion and exclusion. But in reality it does not appear from the transactions of those times, that the minds of the excluded Catholics were less matured for all the responsibilities of independence than those of the Irish aristocracy, upon whom alone the recent revolution had confered it. The 80,000 Volunteers, who had been the instruments of that independence, were not a Protestant association. The depreciated Catholic was in their ranks, adding the authority of his strength, his zeal, and his moderation, to the cause of the Irish Parliament, and not unreasonably confiding, that in the hour of victory his services would be remembered. These services and claims were, however, forgotten; and here it is that the Irish legislature will be found utterly unworthy of that controlling power which they had lately acquired over the destinies of their country-in abandoning, as they did, a proud, irritated, and robust population, to all the contingent suggestions and resources of their indigna

* "I have read," said Mr. Curran, speaking of these unpopular maxims of the Irish Parliament, "I have read the history of other nations. I have read the history of yours. I have seen how happily you emerged from insignificance and obtained a constitution. But when you washed this constitution with the waters which were to render it invulnerable, you forgot that the part by which you held it was untouched by the immersion; it was benumbed and not rendered invulnerable, and should therefore attract your nicest care."-Irish Par. Deb. 1787.

tion-in not having "interposed the Constitution," to save the State.

But the point of view, in which a regular history of the latter conduct and character of the Irish House of Commons would supply matter of no ordinary interest to a lover of the British Constitution, is in the example which it would afford, of an assembly, founded upon the model of that constitution, exhibiting itself in its stage of final deterioration. In Ireland the prediction of Montesquieu has been verified-not in all its dismal extent, for Irish independence has found an euthanasia peculiar and accidental; but still the spectacle of legislative immorality, and its instructive warnings, are the same. The corrupted Commons of Ireland surrendered all that was demanded-all that a few years before they had gloried in having acquired; and if a valuable portion of their country's rights and hopes was not included in the sale, the praise of having respected them is due to the wisdom and mercy of the purchasers, and not to any honourable reluctance on the side of the mercenary sellers. In whatever light the Act of Union be viewed, in its ultimate consequences to the empire, the assembly which perpetrated it must be considered as having reached the farthest limits of degeneracy; because the terms on which they insisted have stamped upon them a character of political dishonour that disdained every control of compunction or of pride. For if the surrender to which they consented was regarded by them as a sacrifice of Ireland's rights, how enormous and unmitigated the delinquency!—or if, on the other hand, they imagined it to be essential to the welfare of the empire, how vile and fallen that spirit which could degrade a necessary act of state into a sordid contract! The Parliament that could do this had no longer any morals to lose--and therefore it is, that the constitutional Englishman, who is labouring to procrastinate the fulfilment of the prophecy that impends over his own hitherto more fortunate country,

"That the British Constitution would not survive the event of the legislative power becoming more corrupt than the executive."-Spirit of Laws.