tells us the number of Irish representatives in the British Parliament is of little consequence. This doctrine is new, namely, that between two nations the comparative influence is of no moment. According to this, it would be of no moment what should be the number of the British Parliament. No, says the minister; the alteration is to be limited to the Irish Parliament; the number and fabric of the British is to remain entire, unaltered, and unalterable. What now becomes of the argument of mutual and reciprocal change? or what does the new argument avow, but what we maintained and the court denied, that the Union was, with respect to Ireland, a merger of her parliament in the legislature of the other, without creating any material alteration therein, save as far as it advanced the influence of the crown direct or indirect. The minister goes on, and supposes 100 Irish will be sufficient, because he supposes any number would be sufficient; and he supposes any number would be sufficient, because the nations are identified. Thus he speaks, as if identification was at once a cause to flow from representation, and an event which preceded it. You are one people, such is his argument, because you are represented, and what signifies how, or, indeed, whether you be represented? But the fact is, that you are identified (if you be identified, which I deny) in the single point of representation, and that representation is absorbed in the superior numbers of the English Parliament, and that apparent identification is, of course, lost, while you remain a distinct country, distinct in interest, revenue, law, finance, commerce, government. Suppose Yorkshire governed by a lord-lieutenant and by a different code of law, she would not be a part of England, but a province of Great Britain; but now the martial law of Scotland must be the martial law of England, and therefore the constitutional sympathy of England defends and renders the number of her representatives less essential; but the martial law of Ireland is not the martial law of England; the military government of Ireland is not the military government of England, and therefore the constitutional sympathy of England does not defend Ireland, but, on the contrary, the imperial jealousy of England endangers Ireland, and has taught the councils of Britain to think that our servitude is our safety. "It is matter of no moment what are the number of Irish representatives, provided that they be sufficient to state the wants, and watch over the interest of their country". So do the public prints make the minister speak. Why! three men are sufficient for that purpose-one man could do it- —a gentleman seated at the bar could do it: the American agents did that before the American war. But the minister is made to add another provision, which makes his doctrine less answerable in point of meaning, leaving it without any meaning at all—" provided that the numbers be sufficient to protect the rights of the country". But, indeed, when he afterwards explains what protection those rights are to receive, then he sets your mind at ease-protection against Jacobinism; that's the only point, and that could be accomplished without a single representative without a parliament; an absolute monarch could do that; martial law will do that; James the Second would have done it. But are there no popular rights? Is liberty gone out of the calendar? Order, government, they are indispensable, but are they the whole? This is new doctrine in these countries, very familiar to a minister, but very fatal to a free people. He confines the purposes of Irish representation to two objects; first, watching and stating, which only requires one representative; secondly, protection against Jacobinism, which requires no representative whatever. He then proceeds to ask himself a question extremely natural after such reasoning; what security has Ireland? He answers, with great candour, honour. English honour. Now, when the liberty and security of one country depends on the honour of another, the latter may have much honour, but the former can have no liberty. To depend on the honour of another country, is to depend on the will; and to depend on the will of another country, is the definition of slavery. "Depend on my honour", said Charles the First, when he trifled about the petition of right: "I will trust the people with the custody of their own liberty, but I will trust no people with the custody of any liberty other than their own, whether that people be Rome, Athens, or Britain". Observe how the minister speaks of that country which is to depend hereafter on British honour, which, in his present power, is, in fact, his honour. "We had to contend with the leaders of the Protestants, enemies to government'; the violent and inflamed spirit of the Catholics; the disappointed ambition of those who would ruin the country because they could not be the rulers of it”. Behold the character he gives of the enemies of the Union, namely, of twenty-one counties convened at public meetings by due notice; of several other counties that have petitioned; of most of the great cities and towns, or indeed of almost all the Irish, save a very few mistaken men, and that body whom government could influence. Thus the minister utters a national proscription at the moment of his projected Union: he excludes by personal abuse from the possibility of identification, all the enemies of the Union, all the friends of the parliamentary constitution of 1782, that great body of the Irish, he abuses them with a petulance more befitting one of his Irish ministers, than an exalted character, and infinitely more disgraceful to himself than to them; one would think one of his Irish railers had lent him their vulgar clarion to bray at the people. This union of parliaments, this proscription of people, he follows by a declaration, wherein he misrepresents their sentiments as he had before traduced their reputation. After a calm and mature consideration, the people have pronounced their judgment in favour of an Union; of which assertion not one single syllable has any existence in fact, or in the appearance of fact, and I appeal to the petitions of twenty-one counties, publicly convened, and to the other petitions of other counties numerously signed, and to those of the great towns and cities. To affirm that the judgment of a nation is erroneous may mortify, but to affirm that her judgment against is for; to assert that she has said ay when she has pronounced no; to affect to refer a great question to the people; finding the sense of the people, like that of the parliament, against the question, to force the question; to affirm the sense of the people to be for the question; to affirm that the question is persisted in because the sense of the people is for it; to make the falsification of her sentiments the foundation of her ruin and the ground of the Union; to affirm that her parliament, constitution, liberty, honour, property, are taken away by her own authority; there is, in such artifice, an effrontery, a hardihood, an insensibility, that can best be answered by sensa tions of astonishment and disgust, excited on this occasion by the British minister, whether he speaks in gross and total ignorance of the truth, or in shameless and supreme contempt for it. The constitution may be for a time so lost; the character of the country cannot be lost. The ministers of the crown will, or may perhaps at length find that it is not so easy to put down for ever an ancient and respectable nation, by abilities, however great, and by power and by corruption, however irresistible; liberty may repair her golden beams, and with redoubled heat animate the country; the cry of loyalty will not long continue against the principles of liberty; loyalty is a noble, a judicious, and a capacious principle: but in these countries loyalty, distinct from liberty, is corruption, not loyalty. The cry of the connection will not, in the end, avail against the principles of liberty. Connexion is a wise and a profound policy; but connexion without an Irish Parliament, is connexion without its own principle, without analogy of condition, without the pride of honour that should attend it; is innovation, is peril, is subjugation--not connexion. The cry of disaffection will not, in the end, avail against the principles of liberty. Identification is a solid and imperial maxim, necessary for the preservation of freedom, necessary for that of empire; but, without union of hearts-with a separate government, and without a separate parliament, identification is extinction, is dishonour, is conquest not identification. Yet I do not give up the country: I see her in a swoon, but she is not dead: though in her tomb she lies helpless and motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her cheek a glow of beauty "Thou art not conquered; beauty's ensign yet While a plank of the vessel sticks together, I will not leave her. Let the courtier present his flimsy sail, and carry the light bark of his faith with every new breath of wind: I will remain anchored here with fidelity to the fortunes of my country, faithful to her. freedom, faithful to her fall. CATHOLIC QUESTION. IN the month of April, Mr. Grattan was returned for Malton, a Yorkshire borough, and in the ensuing month he took his seat for the first time in the Imperial Parliament. Much curiosity was naturally excited to hear a speaker of whom so much had been said, and who, in his own country, had acted so conspicuous a part in obtaining for her a constitution, and in defending it at the period of its extinction; an opportunity soon presented itself, on the subject of the Roman Catholic Petition, which had been entrusted to Mr. Fox, and which, on the 25th of March, he presented to the House. It was read and laid upon the table. The 10th of May was named as the day on which he meant to bring forward a motion upon the subject, this was altered to the 13th, when, after a long and able speech, in which he reviewed the policy of Great Britain towards Ireland, set forth the disabilities under which the Roman Catholics laboured, and the fidelity with which they had adhered to the fortunes of Great Britain, he concluded by moving, "That the petition be referred to the consideration of a committee of the whole House". This was opposed by Dr. Duigenan, who entered into a long and violent invective against the Roman Catholics; he quoted several obsolete decrees of Rome and acts of various councils, and te clared that the Catholics were hostile to the connection with Great Britain, and that any bill in favour of their liberties, would be a violation of his Majesty's coronation oath. After he had concluded: MR. GRATTAN rose, he said, to avoid the example of the member who had just sat down, and instead of calumniating either party, te defend both. The past troubles of Ireland, the rebellion of 1641, and the wars which followed (said the honourable gentleman), I do not wholly forget, but I only remember them to deprecate the example and renounce the animosity. The penal code which went before and followed those times, I remember also, but only enough to know, that the causes and reasons for that code have totally expired; and as on one side the Protestant should relinquish his animosity on account of the rebellions, so should the Catholics relinquish their animosity on account of the laws. The question is not stated by the member; it is not whether you will keep in a state of disqualification a few Irish Catholics, but whether you will keep in a state of languor and neutrality a fifth of the empire. Before you impose such a sentence on yourself, you will require better arguments than those which the member has advanced; he has substantially told you that the Irish Catholic church, which is, in fact, more independent than the Catholic church here, is the worst in Europe; that the Irish Catholics, our own kindred, are the worst of Papists; that the distinction, a distinction made by the law, propounded by ourselves, and essential to the state, between temporal and spiritual power, is a vain discrimination; and that the people of Ireland, to be good Catholics, must be bad subjects: and finally, he has emphatically said, "that an Irish Catholic uever is, never was, never will be, a faithful subject to a British Protestant king": his words are, "they hate all Protestants and all Englishmen ". Thus has he pronounced against his country three curses: eternal war with one another, eternal war with England, and eternal peace with France. So strongly does he inculcate this, that if a Catholic printer were, in the time of invasion, to publish his speech, that printer might be indicted for treason, as the publisher of a composition administering to the Catholics a stimulative to rise, and advancing the authority of their religion for rebellion. His speech consists of four parts-1st, an invective uttered against the religion of the Catholics; 2nd, an invective uttered against the present generation; 3rd, an invective against the past; and 4th, an invective against the future: here the limits of creation interposed, and stopped the member. It is to defend those different generations, and their |