with inveterate opposition from any of the right reverend bench; those of them the most adverse and inveterate will soften, when they consider the Christianity of clothing the naked and feeding the hungry, or rather, indeed, of suffering the naked and the hungry to feed and clothe themselves by encouraging their manufacture, giving certain privileges to their infant labours, and by leaving in their principal food the poor unoppressed by avarice and exaction under any pretence whatsoever. However, if this shall not be the case-if these sound doctrines and these charitable principles are received by some of a certain quarter with hardness of heart, and their author with clerical scurrility, I cannot help it. I shall persist, notwithstanding, in making my solemn appeal against such men to their own Gospel; which, as it is the foundation of their power, so must it be the limits of our veneration.

CORRUPTION BY GOVERNMENT.

February 1, 1790.

MR. GRATTAN said: We combat a project to govern this country by corruption: it is not like the supremacy of the British Parliament —a thunderbolt; nor like the twenty propositions-a mine of artifice; but, without the force of the one or the fraud of the other, will answer all the purposes of both.

I have read books on the subject of government-I have read books on the subject of British government; I have heard of the different principles or foundations of authority-the patriarchal right, the martial right, the conventional rights of kings, the sacred rights of the people. I have heard of different principles applicable to different forms of government-virtue to a republic, honour to a monarchy; but the principles of our ministry, or rather, indeed, their policy, which is a dissolution of all principles, can only be read in the ruin of the nation! You have too lately recovered your liberties not to know wherein exists their virtue: it is not merely in the laws; these the lawyers may pervert to the jargon of slavery; these the lawyers may explain away; they did so in England; they did so in the case of arbitrary arrests of members of Parliament; in the case of ship-money; they did so in Ireland; they did sc in the case of embargoes, without authority from Parliament; in the case of

the British supremacy, and in the case of the regency: for great Jawyers, on constitutional questions, have given not legal but political opinions in favour of their great and mighty client, the Crown. But if you attend to them, you may sit in that chair, the mace before you, the clerks at your feet, the members all around, and the serjeant of arms at your back, and yet not be a parliament; for you will want the spirit and energy of a parliament. No; it is the vital spirit that inspires, the independency that actuates. This principle of independency which is implied in your constitution, is registered in your laws passed in England in the time of William ; they were conceived to guard the rights of the electors against the influence of the revenue, and the purity of the elected against the inundation of the treasury; they were conceived to preserve the popular balance of the constitution, and to form a sort of fence or barrier against those rank majorities, which not seldom swarm from the hive of the treasury, and blacken the seats of the senate; and yet these were feeble laws. Lord Bolingbroke complains of them; he expostulates with the framers of the revolution; they had, says he, guarded liberty against open force; they had secured her against the assaults of prerogative, but not against a secret enemy against clandestine influence; here she was left naked; this was her vulnerable part. Parliamentary integrity is your palladium, With it "you need not fear the force of an enemy; no Agamemnon, no Ulysses can invade yon; without it, Thersites himself will be sufficient for the purpose". Had he seen our policy, what had ne said? a minister like the last forming his faction, and prolonging his government by the mere arts of bribery and corruption, or rather, indeed, by bribery and corruption, without any art whatsoever; then had his lordship exclaimed: "Thersites himself is sufficient for the purpose".

Mr. Locke, who established and rooted the revolution in the minds of the English, maintains that an attempt on the part of the executive power to corrupt the legislature, is a breach of trust, which, if carried into system, is one of the causes of a dissolution of the government. "The executive", says he, "acts contrary to its trust, when it uses the force, the treasure, or the offices of the society to corrupt the representatives and to gain them over to its purpose. To prepare such an assembly, and to endeavour to set them up as the real representatives of the people, and the lawmakers of the society, is surely as great a breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subvert the government as can possibly be". To which, if we add rewards and punishments visibly

employed to the same end, what had Mr. Locke thought of your policy? A set of men possessing themselves of civil, military, and ecclesiastical authority, and using it with a fixed and malignant in tention to corrupt the morals of the people, in order to undermine the freedom of the community, and to make the nation individually base, in order to make her collectively contemptible. How soon must such proceedings accomplish the prediction of Montesquieu, who says, that when the legislative is as corrupt as the executive (as corrupt, for more is scarcely possible), then there is an end of the constitution.

Blackstone having summed up the array of court influence, stops to tremble at it. 66 Surely this never could have been the design of our patriot ancestors, who abolished the formidable parts of the prerogative, and by an unaccountable want of foresight, established this system in their place". He concludes with a pious wish, that this influence may be diminished, and with a parental admonition to the youths of England to guard their country against that monster which, in the hands of the present government, shakes this realm the servile and corrupt influence of the minister. The late Lord Chatham, bending over the corrupt decline of England, confesses this influence. Give her a more popular representation; pour in a new portion of health to enable her to sustain her infirmities: pour in a new portion of poison, says the Irish minister, that she may sink under the accumulation of her infirmities. This danger of cxravagant influence the Commons of England have confessed. Exasperated by defeat, exhausted by war, the effect of twelve years' implicit compliance under that very influence, they at last proclaim, "It is true, the influence of the crown is too much; it ought to be diminished". Here I shall be stopped and told that the fact has falsified the prophecy, and that the constitution of England has stood; but let us not therefore infer, that it is not much impaired, nor confound the slow decline of a state with the rapid mortality of a man, nor forget what moral symptoms she has given, both when the people, as in 1769, appealed to the Crown against their Parliament, and when the Crown, as in 1783, appealed against Parliament to the people. Let them further recollect that the constitution of Great Britain has been, from time to time, shocked back to her original principle, by a number of acts, some of which I have referred to; acts which disable the crown from splitting commissions to multiply placemen; acts which disqualify all persons holding offices created since a certain period from sitting in Parliament; acts which disable all commissioners of customs, of excise, stamps, col

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lectors-in short, the whole tribe of the revenue, from sitting in Parliament; acts which disqualify all pensioners during pleasure from sitting in Parliament, all pensioners during years from sitting in Parliament; acts which disable the Crown from exceeding a certain sum in grants of pensions; acts which disqualify from voting at clections the whole tribe of the revenue. Let them further recollect that there are in England certain counteracting causes; and first, the majesty of the people, a great, authoritative, and imperious public their voice interferes, their instructions overawe, not the deliberations of the body, but frequently the deliberations of that individual of the body that hesitates between his vote and his venality. Let them recollect that there is in England such a thing as responsibility: the public malefactor there cannot always retire from public mischief to triumphant impunity. Let them recollect further, that in England there is a check in great connexions, formed on a public creed; party founded on principle, supported by ambition, cemented by honour, and exalting the component parts above the dominion of salary and the impulse of famine-political famine-of too many in this country the epidemic disease. This has served as a secondary cause of public safety, and whether you call it a higher order of infirmity, or a lower order of virtue, has helped to preserve the life or prolong the euthanasia of the British constitution. How far al these causes actually at this time flourish in England I shall not pretend to decide, but I fear they do not exist, or are in danger of being lost in Ireland. First contemplate your state, and then consider your danger. Above two-thirds of the returns to this House áre private property; of those returns, many actually this moment sold to the minister; the number of placemen and pensioners sitting in this House equal near one-half of the whole efficient body; the increase of that number within the last twenty years greater than all the counties in Ireland. The bills that do exist in England, and should have shocked you back to your original principles, and are necessary to purge the public weal, and to defend you not only against the minister, but yourselves-a pension bill, a place bill, and others—are systematically resisted. The corruptions these laws would guard against, in a most extraordinary manner resorted to by the present ministers of the Crown, and not only resorted to, but made the sole instrument of their government. The laws which depart from the first principles of the constitution-excise, riot act, police bill-readily adopted and obstinately maintained; the counteracting clauses-the responsibility of the minister-a shadow; the majesty of the people, like the constitution, frittered out of your

court. Some of the populace have gone too far; the court availed itself of popular excesses, to cry down constitutional principles; they began with a contempt of popularity, they proceeded to a contempt of fame, and they now vibrate on the last string, a contempt of virtue; and yet these were checks not only in a constitutional public, but in certain connexions; these generally supported the minister, and occasionally checked his enormities. Against this refuge, against the power of the Irish community in general, and this force in particular, is the present policy directed-it is a policy which would govern this country by salary distinct from power, or by power distinct from responsibility-no sturdy tribunes of a constitutional public, no check in an independent nobility.

The runner, the scribe, the stipendiary, the political adventurer, or where the confidential list ascends, men amiable in their manners, and in their private life not only amiable, but even respectable, but men who have no public mind-men somewhat too ready to support any government-men whose characteristic it is to stand by any government, even though that government should stand against Ireland-men who have been, not only the supporters of the minister's power, but the instruments of his passion, his violence, his venality, and his revenge.

excesses.

The advocates for undue influence, who have appeared in Eng land, have admitted it to be a defect, but a defect that would mix with the constitution. The ministers of Ireland have made that de fect the only engine of their government; our ministers have picked up from the British constitution nothing but the most corrupt part of her practice, and that they have carried into the most daring No constitutional bills to heal; no popular bills to pacify. The currency, the pure poison unmixed, unquenched, unqualified; or if qualified, tempered only with revenge. On this principle did the ministers take into their venal and vindictive hand the table of proscriptions; on this principle did they remove, not because the place was unnecessary-they have made unnecessary offices; on this principle did they deprive, not because the pension list was overburdened-they have augmented that list; but because the placemen so removed, and the pensioners so deprived, had voted against the will of the minister in question, wherein that minister was pronounced to be unconstitutional, and convicted to be corrupt. On the same principle did the ministry try the paltry arts of division, holding out the aristocracy to the people as the old accomplices of the minister, and to the country gentleman, as the monopolizers of