The minister proceeds: he states a second instance, namely, that of war. Here, again, the fact is against him; the Parliament of Ireland have, ever since their emancipation, concurred with England on the subject of war; but they have concurred, with this remarkable difference, that, before their emancipation, their concurrence was barren, and since their emancipation, it has been productive. Immediately on the settlement of that emancipation in 1782, they voted a sum for British seamen, and on the apprehension of a war with Spain in 1790, they voted another; and in the present war, under Lord Fitzwilliam's administration, they voted a third; so much more beneficial are the wild' offerings of liberty, than the squeezings, and eviscerations, and excruciations of power. But all this is lost upon the minister; fact and bounty make no impression on him; he has against both a fallacious argument and hungry speculation. He thinks that he foresees that the Parliament of Ireland may dissent from that of Great Britain on the subject of war. He knows that peace and war are in the department of the King, not of parliament; he knows that, on a proclamation by His Majesty, Ireland is in a state of war, of course, and without the assent of the Houses of Parliament; he knows that the supply of that war depends not on the Parliament of Ireland, but of Great Britain; and therefore the interference of the Parliament of Ireland on that subject is little more than the declaration of a sentiment. Now, the declaration of a sentiment on such a subject is only valuable as it is the sentiment of the nation; and the concurrence of Ireland in British wars can only be the sentiment of the nation as the constitution of the nation; that is to say, the rights of Ireland, as claimed by herself, to be exempted from the legislative authority of a British Parliament, are tendered, regarded, and protected by the British empire. It is not the Isle of Ceylon, the Cape of Good Hope, the Mysore country, nor the dominions of Tippoo, nor yet the feathers of her western wing, that engage the attention or interests of Ireland; it is her own freedom and constitution; it is our own idea of that internal freedom and constitution, not such as British ministers, who have invaded that constitution, shall hold forth; nor such as English or Scotch metaphysicians, who made chains for America, and called them her constitution, and who are ready now to cast links for Ireland; but that constitution which she herself, Ireland, feels, comprehends, venerates, and claims; such as she herself expressed in her convention at Dungannon, and through all her counties and cities, and in every description and association of people, and afterwards in full parliament claimed, carried, registered, and recorded; it is for the preservation of this constitution that she is interested in British wars. She considers the British empire a great western barrier against invasion from other countries; invasion on what? invasion on her liberties, on her rights and privileges; invasion on self-legislation, the parent and protectress of them all. She hears the ocean protesting against separation, but she hears the sea likewise protesting against Union; she follows, therefore, her physical destination, and obeys the dispensations of Providence, when she protests, like that sea, against the two situations, both equally unnatural, separation and union. On these principles, I suppose the dissent of Ireland, on the subject of war, highly improbable, as it is uninstanced; but I should attribute, like the minister, infallibility to those councils that engage their country in a war, should I suppose the dissent of Ireland on such a subject at all times to be fatal. Happy had it been for his Majesty, happy had it been for his glory and renown in all time to come, had not the Parliament of Ireland, in an American war, cursed him with her concurrence! What could the tutelary angel of England have done more, if that angel had been Minerva, and that Minerva sat in parliament-what, than to have advanced against the councils of that time the shield of her displeasure? Looking back to the wars in which Great Britain has been engaged, I should therefore suggest, that she is in less danger from the hesitation of Ireland, than from the precipitation of Great Britain. In this part of his argument the minister is weak, but in his remedy he is not only weak, but mischievous. He proposes, by taking away our powers of dissent, to withdraw our motive of concurrence, and, to secure our silence, forfeits our affection; he foresees an improbable event; of that event he greatly exaggerates the danger and provides a remedy which makes that danger not only imminent, but deadly. I will put this question to my country; I will suppose her at the bar, and I will ask her: Will you fight for a Union as you would for a constitution? Will you fight for that Lords and that Commons, who in the last century took away your trade, and in the present your constitution, as for that King, Lords, and Commons, who have restored both? Well, the minister has destroyed this constitution; to destroy is easy; the edifices of the mind, like the fabrics of marble, require an age to build, but ask only minutes to precipitate; and, as the fall of both is an effort of no time, so neither is it a business of any strength; a pick-axe and a common labourer will do the one-a little lawyer, a little pimp, a wicked minister, the other. The constitution, which, with more or less violence, has been the inheritance of this country for six hundred years; that modus tenendi parliamentum, which lasted and outlasted of Plantagenet the wars, of Tudor the violence, and of Stuart the systematic falsehood; the condition of our connection-yes-the constitution he destroys—is one of the pillars of the British empire. He may walk round it and round it, and the more he contemplates, the more must he admire; such a one as had cost England of money millions and of blood a deluge-cheaply and nobly expended; whose restoration had cost Ireland her noblest efforts, and was the habitation of her loyalty; we are accustomed to behold the kings of these countries in the keeping of parliament; I say of her loyalty as well as of her liberty, where she had hung up the sword of the volunteer, her temple of fame, as well as of freedom; where she had seated herself, as she vainly thought, in modest security and in a long repose. I have done with the pile which the minister batters. I come to the Babel which he builds; and as he throws down without a principle, so does he construct without a foundation. This fabric he calls a Union, and to this his fabric there are two striking objections: first, it is no Union: it is not an identification of people, for it excludes the Catholics; secondly, it is a consolidation of the Irish legislatures, that is to say, a merger of the Irish Parliament; and incurs every objection to a Union, without obtaining the only object which a Union professes: it is an extinction of the constitution, and an exclusion of the people. Well! he has overlooked the people as he has overlooked the sea. I say he excludes the Catholics, and he destroys their best chance of admission -the relative consequence. Thus he reasons, that hereafter, in a course of time (he does not say when), if they behave themselves (he does not say how), they may see their subjects submitted to a course of discussion (he does not say with what result or determination); and as the ground for this inane period, in which he promises nothing, and in which, if he did promise much, at so remote a period he could perform nothing, unless he, like the evil he has accomplished, be immortal-for this inane sentence, in which he can scarcely be said to deceive the Catholic, or suffer the Catholic to deceive himself, he exhibits no other ground than the physical inanity of the Catholic body accomplished by a Union, which, as it destroys the relative importance of Ireland, so it destroys the relative proportion of the Catholic inhabitants, and thus they become admissible because they cease to be anything. Hence, according to him, their brilliant expectation: "You were", say his advocates, and so imports his argument, "before the Union as three to one, you will e by the Union as one to four". Thus he founds their hopes of political power on the extinction of physical consequence, and makes the inanity of their body and the nonentity of their country the pillars of their future ambition. The Catholics of the city of Dublin have come forth in support of the constitution. I rejoice at it. They have answered their enemies by the best possible answer-by services. Such answer is more than refutation-it is triumph. The man who supports and preserves parliament qualifies; the path of glory leads on to privilege; "enjoy with me, if you please; without me, if you be illiberal; but by me certainly; and at all events enjoy the parliamentary constitution of your country". This is to defend the tower, this is to leap upon the wreck, this is to sit beside the country in her sick bed; if she recover, there is a long and bright order of days before her, and the Catholics will have contributed to that event; if she perish, they will have done their utmost to save her; they will have done as an honest man ought in such an extreme case they will have flung out their last setting glories, and sunk with their country. Thus The minister, by his first plans, as detailed by his advocates, not only banished the Catholics from parliament, but banished the Protestants from it likewise, for he banished them from a due representation therein; he struck off one half of the county representatives, and preserved the portion of boroughs as two to one. he disposed of the question of Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform, by getting rid of both for ever; thus did he build his first plan of Union upon the abuses both of church and state, and reformed neither; religious monopoly or borough monopoly, he continued to exclude the Catholic from parliament; and he continued to shut out both Protestant and Catholic from a due and effectual parliamentary representation. He shut out Protestant ascendency as well as Catholic participation; and in the place of both, constituted borough ascendency in perpetual abuse and dominion. He reformed the British Parliament by nearly sixty Irish borough members; he reformed the Irish Parliament by 558 English and Scotch members; and on this mutual misrepresentation, constituted an imperial legislature. There was no great effort of ability in all this; much felicity of mischief, no expenditure either of time or talent. There was nothing in the scheme which was grand, nothing which was deep, nothing which was comprehensive; ho demolished an old institution at the same time that he preserved old abuses, and put himself at their head, and entailed them on posterity, like a common disorder, to be continued through what he calls a parental parliament. Such a plan was too desperate, as far as relates to the proportion of counties and boroughs. I understand it is in part abandoned, and well it may, because, whether these representatives be in a greater or lesser proportion borough members, they will be the host of administration, and not the representatives of the people. He takes one hundred members, many of whom are removed by the nature of their election from the influence of representation; all of whom, by removal from their country, are withdrawn from that of sympathy, from that of opinion. He changes the sphere, not only of their action, but of their character and of their sensations. How came the Irish Parliament, with all its borough members, in 1779, to demand a free trade-in 1782, to demand a free constitution? Because it sat in Ireland; because they sat in their own country; and because at that time they had a country; because, however influenced as many of its members were by places, however uninfluenced as many of its members were by popular representation, yet were they influenced by Irish sympathy. They did not like to meet every hour faces that looked shame upon them; they did not like to stand in the sphere of their own infamy; thus they acted as the Irish absentee at the very same time did not act; they saved the country because they lived in it, as the others abandoned the country because they lived out of it. I will not say that one hundred Irish gentlemen will act ill, where any man would act well; but never was there a situation in which they had so much temptation to act ill, and so little to act well; great expense and consequent distresses; no support from the voice of an Irish public; no check; they will be in situation a sort of gentlemen of the empire; that is to say, gentlemen at large, absent from one country, and unelected by the other-suspended between both, and belonging to neither. The sagacious English Secretary of State has foretold this: "What advantage", says he, "will it be to the talents of Ireland, this opportunity in the British empire thus opened?" That is what we dread. The market of St. Stephen opened to the individual, and the talents of the country, like its property, dragged from the kingdom of Ireland to be sold in London; these men, from their situation (man is the child of situation), their native honour may struggle; but from their situation, they will be adventurers of the most expensive kind; adventurers |