transaction of 1782, by principles of municipal law, and which would make a legal security for Ireland under the statute law of England; and this transaction, when measured by what is the real measure, and what, if liberty had been the original principle, would have been the measure, no man can deny to have been, on the part of England, a complete dereliction.

The Irish nation protest against the claim of supremacy; she considers the protest, and then repeals the act declaratory of that claim; such a repeal is an assent to your protest. What clause in an act could be more express or memorable than such a national compact? Parliaments may repeal laws; kings have invaded clear and express laws; but when laws have been environed and sanctified by a revolution, kings do not choose to meddle with them: the solemnity of the transaction gives a security to the law: a national compact between Great Britain and Ireland is higher than law, more awful, and the breach of it more dangerous; for transactions are understood by men who cannot understand law: the national convention being made in 1782, to remove the discontents of Ireland, by relinquishing the supremacy of the British Parliament; the revival of the power is a breach of which every man can judge, without resorting to the laws or lawyers of England; and the nation would rise as one man, not on the point of law, but of fact. I do acknowledge, that this security is not impregnable; there is one body that might shake it; the Irish themselves; England could not; but Ireland might waive the covenant, and then England is free; and when a party in this country pervert the sense of that covenant, they make the mischief they affect to tremble at; they endeavour to render your condition as uncertain as possible, and the faith of England as low as possible, and there they leave you. It was mischievously said, that England was now free to bind Ireland ; it was said with all the affectation of enthusiasm, and the real spirit of rancour; it was said, that if she did, she would find an advocate: the very persons who asserted that the repeal did nothing, refuted their own arguments, falsified their own assertions, and discovered their real sentiments by acknowledging that it liberated the hands of the King to pass a declaration of right, denying the supremacy of the British Parliament.

I now come to the last ground, that the judicature was not surrendered by an English act. Before I proceed on this head, let me state the difficulties; the claim of judicature was a surprise on both kingdoms. Ministry, prepared for a volume of grievances, were not prepared for that requisition. Several of the gentlemen of this country were afraid of the experiment-afraid, lest the judicature should be refused

afraid, lest it should be abused, and the collective body of the nation had not stirred the subject: since the point is obtained, the difficulty is forgotten: notwithstanding the difficulty, I was determined never to yield that point; for, carrying that point, you made yourselves the sole and exclusive judges of the pretensions of the British Parliament, and, of course, rendered those pretensions totally nugatory: you became the repository of your own charters; and until you proved false to yourselves, they could not be taken from you. The judicature being restored, I am condemned, because it was not restored by an English act of Parliament: my answer is, that an Irish act was necessary and competent; necessary, because the practice of Ireland had been long to appeal to England, and the property of the kingdom dependant on the legislation of that past practice; and, as we thought the interposition of the Irish necessary, we thought it expedient. What is your claim of right? That you are the only body competent to make law for this realm in any case whatsoever. If competent in any case whatsoever, are you not competent in this competent to regulate your courts of justice? I, therefore, thought an Irish act, in point of law, adequate; and I am sure, it was adequate in point of security.— The nation says, that the Parliament of Ireland is solely and exclusively competent to make laws for this realm in all cases whatsoever; and I am now condemned for having taken her at her word.

I come now to the last charge, that Parliament was concluded by the address of the 27th, and the nation not freed by the transaction; the clause is, "gratified in these particulars, we conceive no constitutional questions will any longer exist to interrupt the harmony of the two nations." Do you repent that clause? Sir, the rejection of that would have stopped every thing. Irish satisfaction was the price of Irish liberty. Do you think it dear at such a price? There was a time when you could have given millions! Do you seriously imagine that Great Britain would have acceded to the requisition of the 16th of April, if she had been left to apprehend a host of grievances in reserve? that we were only talking plausibly to England, when we enumerated the causes of our discontent and jealousy, but cherished a growing demand -a growth proceeding from the gracious reception which that demand had received? It was not a fanciful clause, as was observed with a ready facetiousness; but one on which British accommodation hung. Individuals might refuse satisfaction, whose object was something other than liberty, but the nation could not. What! do you imagine that the sense or interest of the nation was the declaration of one person, who said, we were pledged to go so far, and free to go on. Individuals may reserve certain latitudes, which would disgrace a nation.

You

were to reject the little policy of knavish latitudes and impracticable duplicity, and consider your own character, and that of the great nation you accosted, and to apply yourself to her magnanimity, as well as her justice, so that her passions might take part against her power.— Believe me, there was a splendour in your moderation, and a force in your fidelity. You prescribed to yourself a sacred precinct; and when England yielded, you scorned to advance: your spirit did not depend on the concession of England; it was an inherent quality of the mind.

Thus have you sealed a treaty with Great Britain. On the one side, the restoration of the final judicature, the extinction of her legislative claim, of her privy council, of her perpetual mutiny bill, the repeal of the act of legislative supremacy: on your side, satisfaction; and thus are the two nations compacted for ever in freedom and in peace.

PHILIPPIC AGAINST FLOOD.

28th October, 1783.

It was said "that the pen would fall from the hand, and the fœtus of the mind would die unborn,"* if men had not a privilege to maintain a right in the Parliament of England to make law for Ireland. The affectation of zeal, and a burst of forced and metaphorical conceits, aided by the acts of the press, gave an alarm which, I hope, was momentary, and which only exposed the artifice of those who were wicked, and the haste of those who were deceived.

But it is not the slander of an evil tongue that can defame me. I maintain my reputation in public and in private life; no man, who has not a bad character, can ever say that I deceived; no country can call me cheat; but I will suppose such a public character. I will suppose such a man to have existence; I will begin with his character in his political cradle, and I will follow him to the last state of political dissolution.

I will suppose him, in the first stage of his life, to have been intemperate; in the second, to have been corrupt; and in the last, seditious that after an envenomed attack on the persons and measures of a succession of viceroys, and after much declamation against their

* Mr. Flood's expression.

illegalities and their profusion, that he took office, and became a supporter of Government when the profusion of ministers had greatly increased, and their crimes multiplied beyond example; when your money bills were altered without reserve by the council, when an embargo was laid on your export trade, and a war declared against the liberties of America; at such a critical moment I will suppose this gentleman to be corrupted by a great sinecure office to muzzle his declamation, to swallow his invectives, to give his assent and vote to the ministers, and to become a supporter of Government, its measures, its embargo, and its American war. I will suppose that he was suspected by the government that had bought him, and in consequence thereof, that he thought proper to resort to the acts of a trimmer, the last sad refuge of disappointed ambition; that, with respect to the constitution of his country, that part, for instance, which regarded the mutiny bill when a clause of reference was introduced, whereby the articles of war, which were, or hereafter might be, passed in England, should be current in Ireland without the interference of her Parliament; when such a clause was in view, I will suppose this gentleman to have absconded: again when the bill was made perpetual, I will suppose him again to have absconded; but a year and a half after the bill had passed, then I will suppose this gentleman to have come forward, and to say, that your constitution had been destroyed by the perpetual bill. With regard to that part of the constitution that relates to the law of Poynings, I will suppose the gentleman to have made many a long, very long, disquisition before he took office, but, after he received office, to have been as silent on that subject as before he had been loquacious. That, when money bills, under colour of that law, were altered year after year, as in 1775 and 1776, and when the bills so altered were resumed and passed, I will suppose that gentleman to have absconded or acquiesced, and to have supported the minister who made the alteration; but when he was dismissed from office, and a member introduced a bill to remedy this evil, I will suppose that this gentleman inveighed against the mischief, against the remedy, and against the person of the introducer, who did that duty which he himself for seven years had abandoned. With respect to that part of the constitution which is connected with the repeal of the 6th of George the First, when the adequacy of the repeal was debating in the House, I will suppose this gentleman to make no kind of objection; that he never named, at that time, the word renunciation; and that, on the division on that subject, he absconded; but, when the office he had lost was given to another man, that then he came forward, and exclaimed against the measure; nay, that he went into the

public streets to canvass for sedition, that he became a rambling incendiary, and endeavoured to excite a mutiny in the volunteers against an adjustment between Great Britain and Ireland, of liberty and repose, which he had not the virtue to make, and against an administration, who had the virtue to free the country without buying the members.

With respect to commerce, I will suppose this gentleman to have supported an embargo which lay on the country for three years, and almost destroyed it; and when an address in 1778, to open her trade was propounded, to remain silent and inactive; and with respect to that other part of her trade, which regarded the duty on sugar, when the merchants were examined in 1778, on the inadequate protecting duty, when the inadequate duty was voted, when the act was re-committed, when another duty was proposed, when the bill returned with the inadequate duty substituted, when the altered bill was adopted, on every one of those questions I will suppose the gentleman to abscond: but a year and a half after the mischief was done, he out of office, I will suppose him to come forth, and to tell his country, that her trade had been destroyed by an inadequate duty on English sugar, as her constitution had been ruined by a perpetual mutiny bill; with relation to three-fourths of our fellow-subjects, the Catholics, when a bill was introduced to grant them rights of property and religion, I will suppose this gentleman to have come forth to give his negative to their pretensions; in the same manner I will suppose him to have opposed the institution of the volunteers, to which we owe so much, and that he went to a meeting in his own county to prevent their establishment; that he himself kept out of their associations; that he was almost the only man in this House that was not in uniform, and that he never was a volunteer until he ceased to be a placeman, and until he became an incendiary.

With regard to the liberties of America, which were inseparable from ours, I will suppose this gentleman to have been an enemy decided and unreserved; that he voted against her liberty; and voted, moreover, for an address to send 4,000 Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans; that he called these butchers "armed negotiators," and stood with a metaphor in his mouth, and a bribe in his pocket, a champion against the rights of America, the only hope of Ireland, and the only refuge of the liberties of mankind. Thus defective in every relationship, whether to constitution, commerce, and toleration, I will suppose this man to have added much private improbity to public crimes; that his probity was like his patriotism, and his honour on a level with his oath: he loves to deliver pane