Mr. Grattan's proposal that the 11th of February should be fixed for taking into consideration the state of the nation was carried, against the exertions of the ministry to postpone that important discussion to a more distant day. On the 11th accordingly both Houses met; when, upon the motion of Mr. Grattan in the one, and of Lord Charlemont in the other, the address to the Prince of Wales, requesting his royal highness to take upon himself the government of Ireland, with the style and title of Prince Regent, and in the name and behalf of his majesty, to exercise all regal functions during his majesty's indisposition, was carried by large majorities in both houses.*

The particulars of the debate in the House of Commons upon this interesting subject, in which Mr. Curran bore a distinguished part, it would be superfluous to detail in this place, as the legislative union has for ever prevented the recurrence of such a question; it will be sufficient merely to observe, that the Whig majority who planned and carried the measure of an address were influenced by two leading considerations. In the first place it seemed to them that the proceeding by an address was the only one which would not compromise the independence of the Irish Parliament. They conceived the present situation of Ireland as similar in many respects to that of England at the period of the revolution: the throne, indeed, was not actually vacant, but an efficient executive was wanting; and upon the

* Pitt's plan was that the Prince Regent should not have the power of making peers, of granting offices or pensions, save during royal pleasure, or of making leases, or of having the care of the King's person, or of administering, save in the King's name. Protesting against them, the Prince of Wales had accepted them from the English Parliament. In Ireland, the legislative resolution was that the Regent should exercise and administer "all regal powers, jurisdiction, and prerogatives" belonging to the Crown. In 1811, when the Prince of Wales really became Regent, it was under the restrictions of 1789-which, however, were to cease at the end of twelve months.-M.

+ The resolution (giving unrestricted power to the Regent) was moved by Mr. Thomas Conolly, supported by C. F. Sheridan, Lord Henry Fitzgerald, Sir Henry Cavendish, Curran, Bushe, and Grattan, opposed by Hobart, Corry, and Attorney-General Fitzgibbon (afterwards Lord Clare), and carried without a division.-M.

This

same principle that the two houses in England had, of their own authority, proceeded to supply the vacancy by the form of an address to the Prince of Orange, so it appeared should those of Ireland (an equally independent legislature) provide for the deficiency of their third estate in the present instance. line of conduct was strenuously opposed by the Attorney-General (Mr. Fitzgibbon); but the strongest of his arguments were rather startling than convincing, and made but little impression upon the majority, who justly felt that a great constitutional proceeding upon an unforeseen emergency should not be impeded by any narrow technical objections, even though they had been more unanswerable than those adduced upon this occasion.*

Next to supporting the dignity of the Irish Parliament, the Whig leaders of 1789 were actuated by the prospects of advantage to Ireland which they anticipated from the change of administration and of system that were expected to follow their exertions. They were anxious to invest the Heir Apparent with the most unrestrained regal authority, in the fullest con

*The following was one of Mr. Fitzgibbon's arguments: "Let me now for a moment suppose, that we, in the dignity of our independence, appoint a Regent for Ireland, being a different person from the Regent of England, a case not utterly impossible, if the gentlemen insist upon our appointing the Prince of Wales before it shall be known whether he will accept the regency of England; and suppose we should go farther, and desire him to give the royal assent to bills, he would say, 'My good people of Ireland, you have, by your own law, made the great seal of England absolutely and essentially necessary to be affixed to each bill before it passes in Ireland; that seal is in the hands of the Chancellor of England, who is a very sturdy fellow; that Chancellor is an officer under the Regent of England; I have no manner of authority over him; and so, my very good people of Ireland, you had better apply to the Regent of England, and request that he will order the Chancellor of England to affix the great seal of England to your bills; otherwise, my very good people of Ireland, I cannot pass them.""

"This," said Mr. Curran, in his observations upon this argument, "is taking seals for crowns, and baubles for sceptres; it is worshipping wafers and wax in the place of a King; it is substituting the mechanical quibble of a practising lawyer for the sound deduction of a philosopher standing on the vantage ground of science; it is more like the language of an Attorney particular than an Attorney-General; it is that kind of silly fatuity that on any other subject I should leave to be answered by silence and contempt; but when blasphemy is uttered against the constitution, it shall not pass under its insig nificance, because the essence should be reprehended, though the doctrine cannot make a proselyte."-M.

fidence that the benefits on which they calculated would be commensurate with the power to confer them. How far these sanguine hopes would have been realized, how far the measures of a ministry listening to the counsel of Mr. Fox could have healed the existing discontents, or have prevented the calamities that succeeded, must now be matter of controversial speculation, his Majesty's health having been fortunately restored before the arrangements regarding the Regency were yet concluded.

Although the conduct of the Irish House of Commons at this important crisis has been generally adduced as a proof of the dangerous spirit of independence that pervaded that assembly, and therefore insisted on as an argument for a legislative union; yet, were it now worth while to examine the subject, it would not be difficult to show that the crowd who on that occasion so zealously volunteered their support of the opposition were influenced by far other motives than a lofty sense of their own country's dignity; and that, however the English government might, at some rare conjuncture, be embarrassed by their versatility, it had nothing to apprehend from their patriotic virtue. No sooner was it ascertained that the cause which they had lately espoused was to be unattended with emolument, than they returned in repentance to their tenets; and incontestably did they prove in their subsequent life the extent and the sincerity of their contrition.

There were a few, however, who would upon no terms continue their support of the Irish Administration: they lost their places, which they might have retained, and, joining the opposition, adhered to it with undeviating and "desperate fidelity," as long as the Irish Parliament continued to exist.*

*Among these were Mr. George Ponsonby, and his brother, Lord Ponsonby; and in the upper house, the Duke of Leinster. In a letter to Mr. Grattan, Mr. Curran thus alludes to the formation of the last Opposition in the Irish Parliament: "You well remember the state of Ireland in 1789, and the necessity under which we found ourselves of forming some bond of honourable connexion, by which the co-operation of even a small number might be secured, in making some effort to stem that torrent which was carrying every thing before it. For that purpose our little party was then formed; it

[On April 21, 1789, Curran supported the bill for preventing excise officers from voting at parliamentary elections-a measure then defeated by a majority of 148 to 93, but since adopted all through the United Kingdom. Four days later he supported Sir H. Cavendish's resolutions condemnatory of the waste and useless patronage with which the Dublin police system was attended.]

It has been seen in the preceding pages, that the zeal with which Mr. Curran performed his public duties had already twice endangered his life in the beginning of the year 1,790, it was again exposed to a similar risk. If his duel with the Irish Secretary, Major Hobart (now alluded to), had been the consequence of accidental intemperance of language or conduct on either side, the account of it should be hastily dismissed; but such was not its character. The circumstances that preceded it are peculiarly illustrative of the condition of the times, of the state of the Irish House of Commons, of the manner in which that state rendered it incumbent upon an honest senator to address it, and of the dangers that attended him who had the boldness to perform his duty.

In the month of February, 1790, Mr. Curran made the following speech in that House:* independent of the other reasons for which it is here introduced, it may be offered as among the most favourable examples of his parliamentary oratory.

consisted of yourself, the late Duke of Leinster, that excellent Irishman, the late Lord Ponsonby. Mr. George Ponsonby, Mr. Daly, Mr. Forbes, and some very few others. It may not be for us to pronounce encomiums upon it, but we are entitled to say, that had it been as successful as it was honest, we might now look back to it with some degree of satisfaction."-C. [The Ministerial deserters in Ireland were cashiered in all direction. It was said that the Minister thus made more patriots in one day than patriotism had ever made in a year. Sheridan's younger brother, Charles, the Irish Secretary-at-War, was among the ejected-but he fared well, for Pitt gave him a pension of £1,200 a year, with a reversion of £300 to his wife.]-M.

*This speech was delivered on February 4, 1790, on the question of stamp officers' salaries. At that time the Earl of Westmoreland was Viceroy (he succeeded the Marquis of Buckingham on January 5, 1790), and Major Hobart was his Chief Secretary-a position not to be confounded with that of Secretary of State for Ireland, abolished at the Union.-M.

"I rise with that deep concern and melancholy hesitation, which a man must feel who does not know whether he is addressing an independent Parliament, the representatives of the people of Ireland, or whether he is addressing the representatives of corruption: I rise to make the experiment; and I approach the question with all those awful feelings of a man who finds a dear friend prostrate and wounded on the ground, and who dreads lest the means he should use to recover him may only serve to show that he is dead and gone for ever. I rise to make an experiment upon the representatives of the people, whether they have abdicated their trust, and have become the paltry representatives of Castle influence: it is to make an experiment on the feelings and probity of gentlemen, as was done on a great personage, when it was said, 'thou art the man.' It is not a question respecting a paltry Viceroy; no, it is a question between the body of the country and the administration; it is a charge against the government for opening the batteries of corruption against the liberties of the people. The grand inquest of the nation are called on to decide this charge; they are called on to declare whether they would appear as the prosecutors of the accomplices of corruption: for though the question relative to the division of the Boards of Stamps and Accounts is in itself of little importance, yet will it develop a system of corruption tending to the utter destruction of Irish liberty, and to the separation of the connexion with England.

"Sir, I bring forward an act of the meanest administration that ever disgraced this country. I bring forward as one of the threads by which, united with others of similar texture, the vermin of the meanest kind have been able to tie down a body of strength and importance. Let me not be supposed to rest here; when the murderer left the mark of his bloody hand upon the wall, it was not the trace of one finger, but the whole impression which convicted him.*

The allusion here is probably to a little story popular among children in Ireland,