something like a wish that the statement should be extended still farther, but nothing like an argument. Let us suppose, then, the present war to last for three years; for one you have provided already; in the remaining two you will, according to him, save two millions; but you are to pay for the purchase of boroughs, £1,500,000; so that your net saving for the surrender of your parliament will be £500,000 only. But this gain is founded upon a supposition that the noble lord's statements are right, and that the annual supply now voted is a million more than the annual contributionary supply projected; but his annual contributionary supply he states to be £4,492,000 English, and the supply voted this year is £4,652,000 Irish; so that his saving in time of war seems to be a perfect delusion. If you look back, you will find that, upon his principle of contribution, we should in the present year, taking into consideration the taxes on exports and on income, and the permanent taxes raised this year in Great Britain, have raised, in addition to our former supplies, the annual income of above £2,000,000 a-year. Looking to the present moment, you see that you save nothing; and, looking prospectively, you see you pledge yourself to a principle of expense which is indefinite. You are to pay, I think he says, £4,400,000 English in time of war, unless England should raise her expense, and then you are to raise yours along with her. Let us, however, take the Irish contribution, and £4,492,000 English; I should be glad to know whether this is to be expended on troops kept within the country or not? If on the former, it is a very bad disposition of the force of the empire, which cannot be justified but by rebellion and invasion, or the apprehension of both, and therefore never can be considered as the permanent application of His Majesty's forces. If the latter, that is, if the money be to be expended on troops serving out of the country, how will you ever be able to bear so great a drain in addition to all your others? the drain of the absentees; the drain of the additional absentees; the drain of money paid for the interest of additional debt, and now the drain of the Irish contribution expended in other countries; so that, according to this plan, an invasion, or the apprehension of invasion or rebellion, are the only means to prevent bankruptcy. In every shape I view this question, it is mischievous; and not less mischievous as the extinction of the Parliament of Ireland, than as the corruption of the Parliament of Great Britain. You reduce your Commons by two-thirds; and you make the minister a present of the other; you calculate upon an immense Irish establishment in war, and an increased establishment in peace.

Thus you increase greatly the sources of influence, while you diminish the number of the persons on whom that influence is to operate; you keep up all the Irish establishments so augmented, together with all the establishments of Great Britain, and leave the double cause to operate on one parliament.

The British House of Commons resolved some years ago, that the influence of the crown had increased, and ought to be diminished. I understand it has considerably increased since. Some years ago, the number of placemen and pensioners in the Irish House of Commons were one hundred and ten; since that time the influence of the crown has greatly increased in Ireland; and, according to the plan of Union, the peace establishment is to increase one-third, and the military establishment infinitely beyond anything known in former wars. Thus, in addition to an influence which both countries felt to be truly alarming, and one country, in the resolutions of her representatives, declared to be so, do we see a vast accumulation formed and forming, to act on the reduced numbers of one legislature, thus rendered more compendious for the corruption of the minister, as the corruption of the minister is rendered more comprehensive and more decisive in the legislature; so that you lay a train for the downfall of the constitution of Great Britain, by the surrender of your own, whether you look to the military government, which is likely to take place in Ireland, to support this act of power, for such I must call the Union, or to the tides of patronage, which are to accompany this act of power, and, to add to terror the force of corruption, in conjunction against the cause of liberty.

I have mentioned the contributionary aid which is to follow this Union. I beg to consider, upon what proportion that contribution is founded. The noble lord who introduced the Union states it to be as two-fifteenths, or as a seventh and a half; but the grounds on which he formed his proportion, I own, do not satisfy me. His principal ground was a comparison of the respective exports and imports of the two countries, and he estimates the imports and exports of England, on an average of the three last years, at £73,000,000, and those of Ireland at £10,000,000, and something more. Mr. Pitt, in his calculation for his income tax, stated them at above £80,000,000, and on that trade which was actually insured, and we must suppose much that was not insured. The noble lord has understated the export and import trade of England; he is also erroneous, inasmuch as he does not include tonnage, the proportion of which is beyond all comparison in favour of Great Britain. In the trade between Great Britain and this country, the

tonnage and freight is almost entirely British; valuing, therefore, the imports from Great Britain to this country, as a part of our trade, we ought to value the freight as her wealth, not ours, and it ought to be added to her export. He does not include in his estimate £1,000,000 (it is a great deal more) imported into England to pay the absentees their rents from Ireland, and £4,000,000 from the West Indies. He does not include in his plan of valuation of comparative wealth by trade, the internal commerce of the two countries. which is to Great Britain a greater source of wealth than any other, and which, when we consider that Great Britain is in possession almost exclusively of her own markets, as far as relates to her manufactures, bears a prodigious proportion, we may presume, to the internal trade of Ireland. He says, that is difficult to obtain any knowledge on that subject; which would be a good reason for rejecting the Union, when so necessary a knowledge was impossible; but the fact is, Mr. Pitt, in his speech on the income tax, has obtained knowledge on that subject, at least knowledge enough for the purpose of taxation; and he states the value of the internal trade of his country to be £120,000,000. There are other things of less consequence, but, however, of consequence notwithstanding, which he omits to state; for instance, he omits to state the profits of mines, minerals, timber, and shares in canals, which exist in Ire'and in a very small degree of comparison, and which are rated to produce in England £3,000,000 per annum. From all this what do I conclude? Not that the proportion of the wealth of Ireland is this quantity or that quantity, but that he has not given you any data whereon to conclude that the proportion of wealth in the two countries is the contribution propounded, namely, two-fifteenths, or one seventh and a half; on the contrary, I think you may safely say, that he overrates you in contribution, as he overcharges you in establishment.

On the whole, it remains then for us to reject this measure; it is a dishonourable measure; it is an insulting measure; it is a faithless measure; the commercial interests cry out against it; the spirit of the country and her constitution cry out against it; witness the petitions of different descriptions of men of all religions, who seem now to forget their differences, and only to remember their danger. I might here appeal to the different branches of the constitution, which you are going to devote. Lo the Lords: will they burn their robes, overset the throne, disgrace their ancestors, disqualify their blood, and consent to become slaves with nicknames, instead of peers with privileges? I might appeal to the Commons: will you, who

reraember the business of 1782, before the grave has closed on all the persons concerned in that great event, and when the hearse is but just returned from depositing the remains of some of them, will you violate yourselves, violate the obsequies of our dead general,* and renounce publicly, and deliberately, and for ever, your constitution and your renown? I might call on you by all the good laws you have established, by the commerce which you have freed, and by those manufactures which appear from the evidence lately produced at your bar to have grown like so many children under the providence of a free constitution. I might call on you by those measures of coercion which you lately adopted, and which the most vehement assertor of power never attempted to justify, but inasmuch as he thought them the means to preserve the parliament and constitution. Do not now scandalize your own professions on that occasion, as well as renounce your former achievements, and close a political life of 700 years by one monstrous, self-surrendering, selfdebasing act of relinquishment, irretrievable, irrecoverable, flagitious, and abominable. I might appeal to the king, whose royalty is the auspicious birth of a free constitution. Let him not suffer any minister to profane the mild blood of the House of Hanover, or to sink his illustrious house to the level of other kings by corrupt and unconstitutional victories obtained over the liberties and charters of his subjects. I might appeal to the spirit of loyalty itself against this measure of Union. I mean that loyalty which distinguishes the people of these islands; other nations are slaves, but they are subjects. Do I mean that loyalty which is attached to the person of his Majesty? No; but that loyalty which is attached to the person of his Majesty, with all the constitutional circumstances which surround it; that pride of privilege, that love of liberty, and that tenacity of public honour. This it was, which in former times sustained British liberty at home, and her arms abroad; it was not discipline alone, for the armies on the continent are at least as well disciplined; it was not courage alone, for that your enemies possessed in common with the rest of mankind; but it was the spirit of a free constitution sustaining that courage and that discipline, which made every soldier in the line, with but six pence in his pocket and one shirt to his back, conceive himself an integral part of a free state, and a conscious proprietor of the great charter. It was this, that in former times drove old Bourbon in battle; it was this that made his Majesty's subjects men, not slaves; and it is this,

The Earl of Charlemont.

which you are going in Ireland, along with the constitution, from whence it emanated, to extinguish for ever.

I conclude, in these moments-they seem to be the closing moments of your existence-by a supplication to that power whom I tremble to name, that power who has favoured you for 700 years with the rights and image of a free government, and who has lately conducted you out of that desert, where for a century you had wandered, that He will not desert you now, but will be pleased to permit our beloved constitution to remain a little longer among us, and interpose His mercy between the stroke of death and the liberties of the people.

May 26, 1800.

MR. GRATTAN observed that the bill before the House was full of inaccuracies, but inaccuracy was the least of the objections; it did indeed refer to a schedule for duties which were not there set forth, and which were not yet passed; it did indeed recite a bill to have passed both Houses of Parliament which was at that very moment in debate before the House of Lords; and it did describe that very bill by the name of an act of parliament (saying, that when the act, namely, a bill which had only passed one house, had the royal assent, should pase), offending against parliamentary propriety and legal phraseology with its various and great improprieties, the evident marks of haste and carelessness. But all these are lost in the fatal principle of ruin and extinction which the bill contains, whose enacting clauses are two, first that there shall be a distinct and separate council, and secondly, that there shall not be a parliament.

That is to say, that you are to have not what is miscalled a Union, still less a union and a constitution of liberty, but a subordinate Irish government without the control of an Irish parliament; the inferiority, the expense, the patronage, of a second and secondary government, with all those distinctions which attend separate establishments of finance and revenue, with a separate system of trade, with a different interest for money, and a distinct code of law. This breach of compact, for such I must call it this surrender of liberty, for it is nothing less-this transfer of the powers of the country to Great Britain-(what powers have you over India? precisely as much as you retain over Ireland)—this introduction of an innovation, consisting of a separate Irish government without an Irish Parliament, is made at a time of national debility and division,