ment.

sideration the discontents and jealousies prevailing in the country, with a view to their final adjustAfter the message was read, he mentioned Mr. Grattan, in terms of the highest respect, and said, he must ever live in the hearts of his countrymen; that the present age and posterity would be indebted to him, for the greatest of all obligations, and would, but he hoped at a great distance of time, inscribe on his tomb that he had redeemed the liberties of his country.

Mr. George Ponsonby, moved "That a dutiful and loyal address should be presented to his majesty, thanking him for his gracious message, and assuring him, that his faithful commons, would immediately proceed upon the great object he had recommended to their consideration."

Mr. Grattan rose to move an amendment; and prefaced his motion with the following masterly and eloquent harangue, whose insertion here will amply repay perusal, and help to diversify the sometimes barren details of history, with the most brilliant effusions of genius.—

66 MR SPEAKER,

"I shall state my reasons for changing the form, and enlarging the substanceof the address proposed by the right honourable gentleman, and hope to induce the house rather to declare that they had considered the cause of jealousy, and that they were contained in my original motion for a declaration of rights, which I shall now move as an

amendment. I have thrown the declaration of rights into the form of an humble address to the throne; and have added other matter that calls. for redress. I have done this in a manner which I conceive respectful to the king, reconciling to the pride of England, and with all due tenacity of the rights and majesty of the Irish nation; and if I sink under this great argument, let my infirmity be attributed to any cause, rather than a want of zeal in your service-1 have troubled you so often on the subject of your rights, that I have nothing to add; but am rather to admire by what miraculous means and steady virtue, the people of Ireland, have proceeded, until the faculty of the nation, is now bound up to the great act of her own redemption. I am not very old, and yet I remember Ireland a child; I have followed her growth with anxious wishes, and beheld with astonishment the rapidity of her progress, from injuries to arms-from arms to liberty. I have seen her mind enlarged, her maxims open, and a new order of days burst in upon her. You are not now afraid of the French, nor afraid of the English, nor afraid of one another. You are no longer an insolvent gentry, without privilege, except to tread upon a crest fallen constituency, nor a constituency without privilege, except to tread upon the catholic body; you are now a united people, a people, a nation manifesting itself to Europe in signal instances of glory. Turn to the rest of Europe, and you will find the ancient

spirit has every where expired; Sweden has lost her liberty; England is declining; the other nations support their consequence by mercenary armies, or the remembrance of a mighty name; but you are the only people that have recovered your constitution-recovered it by steady virtue you have departed from the example of other nations, and have become an example to them. You not only excel modern Europe, but you excel what she can boast of old. Liberty, in former times, was recovered by the quick feelings and rapid impulse of the populace, excited by some strong object presented to the senses. Such an object, was the daughter of Virginius, sacrificed to virtue; such the seven bishops, whose meagre and haggard looks expressed the rigour of their sufferings; but no history can produce an instance of men, like you, musing for years upon oppression, and then, upon a determination of right, RESCUING

THE LAND.

"The supporters of liberty, in the reign of Charles I, mixed their sentiments of constitution with principles of gloomy bigotry; but you have sought liberty on her own principles; you see the delegates of the North advocates for the catholics of the South; the presbytery of Banger mixing the milk of humanity with the benignity of the gospel-as christians tolerant-as Irishmen united. This house, agreeing with the desires of the nation, relaxed the penal code, and by so doing, got more than it gave; you found advantages

66

from generosity, and grew rich in the very act of your bounty; it was not merely an act of bounty to the catholics; it was an act of bounty to yourselves; you hardly had given them privileges, when you felt your own, and magnified your liberty, by enlarging the sphere of its action': you did not give away your own power:-No-you formed an alliance with catholic power, and found in that alliance a new strength and a new freedom. Fortunately for us England did not take the lead; her minister did not take the lead in the restoration of our rights; had England, in the first instance, ceded, you would have sunk under the weight of the obligation, and given back the acquisition with a sheepish gratitude; but the virtue, the pride of the people, was our resource, and it is right that the people should have a lofty conception of themselves. It was necessary that Ireland should be her own redeemer to form her mind as well as her constitution, and erect in her soul a vast jinage of herself, and a lofty sense of her own exaltation; other nations have trophies and records to elevate the human mind; those outward and visible signs of glory, those monuments of their heroic ancestors, such as were wont to animate the ancient Greeks and Romans, and rouse them in their country's cause; but you had nothing to call forth the greatness of the land, except injuries, and it is astonishing that you should have preserved your pride; but more astonishing that you should proceed with a temper seldom found

Every man concurred to produce that exaltation. 55 amongst the injured, and success never but with the virtuous; which not only elevates you above our own level, but makes you equal to those natious modern and ancient, whose histories you are accustomed to admire, and among whom you are now to be recorded. You have no trophies; but the liberty you transmit to your, posterity is more than trophy. I dwell the more on this part of the subject, because I hold it necessary to pour into the public mind a considerable portion of pride, acting up to a good national character founded on a great transaction. What sets one nation above another, but the soul that dwells therein? that atherial fire: for it is of no avail, that the arm be strong if the soul be not great. The armies of England were most numerous under her late administration; but the English soul which should have inspired these armies, was gone. What signifies it, that three hundred men in the house of commons-what signifies it that one hundred in the house of Peers, assert their country's cause, if unsupported by the people; nor was this act of your redemption confined to any body of men; all have had a share in it; there is not a man that watches his fire-lock this night -there is not a grand jury-there is not an association, there is not a corps of volunteers, there is not a meeting of their delegates, that is not a party to this acquisition, and pledged to support it to the last drop of his blood. It seems as if the subjects of Ireland had met at the altar,

"