scandal; so far it resembles your conduct, but it was no more. The offence was confined to a single instance; the Duke of Buckingham created one peer of the realm, one hereditary legislator, one hereditary couns llor, and one final judiciary, for a specific sum of money for his private use; but the Irish minister has created divers hereditary legislators, divers hereditary counsellors, and divers final judiciaries, for many specific sums of money. The Duke of Buckingham only took the money for a seat in the peers, and applied it to his own use; but the Irish minister has taken money for seats in the Peers, under contract that it should be applied to purchase seats ir the Commons; the one is an insulated crime for private emolument, the other a project against the commonweal in this act.

The ministers have sold the prerogatives of the crown to buy the privileges of the people; they have made the constituent parts of the legislature pernicious to each other; they have played the two Houses like forts upon one another; they have discovered a new mode of destroying that fine fabric, the British constitution, which escaped the destructive penetration of the worst of their predecessors; and the fruit of their success in this most unhallowed, wicked endeavour would be the scandal of legislation, which is the common right of both Houses; of jurisdiction, which is the peculiar privilege of one; and adding the discredit which, by such offences, they bring on the third branch of the constitution (unfortunately exercised in their own persons), they have attempted to reduce the whole process of govern ment in this country, from the first formation of law to the final decision and ultimate execution; from the cradle of the law, through all its progress and formation, to its last shape of monumental record; they have attempted to reduce it, I say, to disrepute and degradation.

Are these things to go unpunished? Are they to pass by with the session, like the fashion of your coat, or any idle subject of taste or amusement? Is any state criminal to be punished in Ireland? Is there such a thing as a state offence in Ireland? If not, renounce the name of inquest, if ay, punish. He concluded by moving the following resolution:-"That a select committee be appointed to examine, in the most solemn manner, whether the late or present administration have entered into any corrupt agreement with any person or persons, to recommend such person or persons to His Majesty, as fit and proper to be by him made peers of this realm, in consideration of such person or persons giving certain sums of mone to be laid out in procuring the return of members to serve in parlia

ment, contrary to the rights of the people, inconsistent with the independency of parliament, and in violation of the fundamental laws of the land".

SPEECH ON THE ADDRESS.

January 19, 1792.

THE House met pursuant to prorogation, when the Lord-lieutenant (Westmoreland) opened the session by the following speech to both Houses :

"My Lords and Gentlemen,

"I have it in command from his Majesty to acquaint you, that, since the close of the last session, preliminaries of peace have been signed between Russia an the Porte, and those powers are now engaged in negotiation for a definitive treaty, which his Majesty trusts will complete the restoration of tranquillity amongst the different powers of Europe.

"His Majesty, convinced of the interest you take in whatever concerns his domestic happiness, commands me to acquaint you of the marriage of his Royal Highness the Duke of York and the Princess Royal of Prussia.

"Gentlemen of the House of Commons,

"I have ordered the proper officers to lay before you the national accounts, and I trust you will make such provisions as are necessary for the exigencies cf the state, and the honourable support o his Majesty's government.

"My Lords and Gentlemen,

"The constant attention you have shown to the interests of Ireland makes i unnecessary to recommend to you a continuance of that wise system of policy, from which your country has received such inestimable advantages in the increase of her trade, her credit, and manufactures. It is equally unnecessary for ine particularly to point out the encouragement of your agriculture, and attention to your linen manufacture. The Protestant charter-schools, and other charitable institutions, will receive your accustomed consideration.

"You may be assured of my zealous coöperation to forward every measure that may contribute to the public welfare. I shall pay unremittin tention to the due execution of the law, and the maintenance of good order and government, so essential to the continuance of that freedom, prosperity, and happiness, which Ireland enjoys under his Majesty's auspicious reign, and under our excellent constitution".

Lord Thurles, in a maiden speech, moved an address of thanks to his Majesty. It was an echo of the speech The motion was seconded by the Honourable George Knox, who declared his approbation of the government and their administration.

MR. GRATTAN said: I have no objection to concur in everything honourable to his Majesty, and sincerely do rejoice in every circumstance which can add to his public and private happiness. I am sure every circumstance that can tend to increase that happiness, must give pleasure to every branch of his Majesty's subjects, and to

none more sincerely than to his loyal people of Ireland, who must ever rejoice in the auspicious increase of the illustrious House of Hanover, whose accession to the throne of these dominions has been attended with so many blessings to this country, as well as every other part of the empire. So far I am ready to concur in this address. In addresses of this kind, declarations of our readiness to support the different establishments of government are usual and perhaps necessary. But I freely concur in that part of the declaration, and am not only willing to support those establishments, but even any new establishment which can add to the honour of his Majesty's reign, or the happiness of his family. But to that part of the address, which goes to declare thanks to his Majesty for continuing in the government of this country a Lord-lieutenant and an administration whose measures I have found it necessary to oppose, and who have uniformly opposed every measure urged for the good of this country, I cannot give my assent. It would be equally inconsistent and absurd for men to have found it necessary to oppose the measures of administration, and then to return thanks to his Majesty for continuing that administration. To comply, therefore, in this part of the address, with the unanimity the young nobleman recommends, would be to render the compliment of congratulation to his Majesty a farce.

Either the opposition would appear insincere, or the address itself must appear so. But I know better of one side, and I hope better of the other, than to imagine such a circumstance. The measures of opposition have not been lightly taken up, nor will they be lightly abandoned. They were adopted in sincerity of heart, and have been maintained by uniformity of conduct.

It is now ten years since you recovered your constitution, and three since, in the opinion of some, you have lost it. Your present ministers made two attempts on your liberties; the first failed, and the second, in a degree has succeeded. You remember the first; you remember the propositions. The people of Ireland would not consent to be governed by the British Parliament; an expedient was devised-let the Irish Parliament govern the people of Ireland, and Britain govern the Irish Parliament. She was to do so specifically in those subjects in which she had been most oppressivemonopolies of commerce East and West. We were to put down the Irish constitution, in order to set up British monopoly against Irish commerce. The ministry who conducted this trick, took care to make the Irish advance by a certain number of propositions, under an assurance that the British cabinet would, to an iota, accede, and

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they made the Irish Parliament give an additional revenue on the faith of that accession. They then suffered the propositions to be reversed, turned them against the country from which they were supposed to proceed, and made them fatal at once to her constitution and to her commerce. The individuals concerned in this business, some of them had pledged themselves against an iota of alteration -they broke their honour. The Irish minister was pledged to a specific system-he prevaricated; in the attempt on her liberty he was a violator; in taking her taxes, a swindler.

This measure was

defeated by the influence principally of that part of the aristocracy who refused to go through the bill, and who have been dismissed. They who made the attempt have been advanced and rewarded. The path of public treaclory in a principal country leads to the block, but in a nation governed like a province, to the helm.

The second attempt was the modelling of parliament; in 1789 fifteen new salaries, with several new pensions to the members thereof, were created at once, and added to the old overgrown parliamentary influence of the crown: in other words, the expenditure of the interest of half a million to buy the House of Commons; the sale of the peerage and the purchase of seats in the Commons; the formation of a stock-purse by the minister to monopolize boroughs and buy up representation.

This new practice, whereby the minister of the crown becomes the common borough-broker of the kingdom, constitutes an offence so multitudinous, and in all its parts so criminal, as to call for radical reformation and exemplary punishment, whether the persons concerned be Lord Buckingham or his secretary, or those who became the objects of his promotion because they had been the ministers of his vices. It was a conspiracy against the fundamental laws of the laud, and sought to establish, and in a degree has established, in the place of a limited monarchy, a corrupt despotism; and if any thing rescues the persons so concerned from the name of traitors it is not the principles of law, but its omission, that has not described by any express provisionary statute, that patricide, of which these men in intention and in substance are guilty. They have adopted a practice which decides the fate of our parliamentary constitution. In vain shall we boast of its blessings, and of its three estates, the king, the lords, and tie coinmons, when the king sells one estate to buy the other, and so contaminates both. The minister has sent one set of men packing into the peers, and another set of men packing into the commons. and the first he calls the hereditary council, and the latter the grand council of the nation, and both, that once great

and august institution-the parliament. Such a condition, I say, puts the constitution of Ireland, not merely below a republic, but below any other form of genuine and healthy government. It is not a mixed moarchy, with parts happily tempered and so forth, the cant of grave and superannuated addresses, but a rank, and vile, and simple, and absolute government, rendered so by means that make every part of it vicious and abominable-the executive, which devours the whole, a id the other two parts, which are thus extinguished. Of such a constitution, the component parts are debauched by one another; the monarch is made to prostitute the prerogative of honour by the sale of honours; the lords by the purchase; and the commons prostitute their nature by being the offspring, not of the people, but of a traffic, and prostitute themselves again by the sale of their votes and persons.

I allow the British constitution the best, and arraign this model as the worst, because practically and essentially the opposite of that British constitution. The British minister has given an account of the English constitution, which he wishes to extend to the Irish constitution. "Aristocracy", he says, "reflects lustre on the Crown, and lends support and effect to democracy, while democracy gives vigour and energy to both, and the sovereignty crowns the constitution with dignity and authority. Aristocracy is the poise", he says; "give an infusion of nobility". The Irish minister can answer him: he who sold the aristocracy and bought the democracy; he who best understands in practice what is this infusion of nobility; he who has infused poison into this aristocratic and this democratic division of power, and has crowned the whole with corruption; he well knows all this, as far as Ireland is concerned, to be theatric representation, and that the constitution of the country is exactly the reverse of those scenes and farces which are acted on the public stages, of imposture and hypocrisy.

By this trade of parliament the king is absolute; his will is signified by both houses of parliament, who are now as much an instruinent in his hand as a bayonet in the hands of a regiment. Like a regiment, we have our adjutant, who sends to the infirmary for the old, and to the brothel for the young, and men thus carted as it were into this House to vote for the minister, are called the representatives of the people. Suppose General Washington to ring his bell, and order his servants out of livery to take their seats in congress. You can apply this instance.

We have read a description of the late National Assembly of France. I can suppose something more degrading even than the