England is a security for liberty, is a position too absurd and despicable to be answered; that the statute law of England is a control on the Parliament of England, and a legal security for the liberties of Ireland against the Parliament, is a position which has already been answered and exposed: both the positions answer themselves; the term liberality precludes security; and the term law imports a legal dependence upon, and not a security against, the law maker: so both the legs of the dilemma are struck away; the honourable member must descend. He has still a halt in a distinction where he asserts that legal security cannot be had between unconnected nations, but may be had between nations connected by civil government. The grounds of this distinction he is not pleased to discover; but we must suppose, by the words, countries connected by civil government, he means dependent, like Guernsey on England, or independent of each other, like England and Ireland. If the former, his observations do not apply; and if the latter, to state the connection will be sufficient to show that the consequence he has stated does not proceed from it: the connexion in question is, the annexation of the crown, but the legislatures are distinct and independent. Now, if the member means, that the Parliament of England can in anywise affect Ireland by the legal operation of its laws, or if he means, that the Parliament of England cannot repeal an English act affecting to give legal security to Ireland, because the king is the same, he argues in both equally wrong and equally illogical. Does the annexation of the crown, which is the connection by her civil government, give the Parliament of England authority over Ireland? or does it take from that Parliament its authority over England—the power of repealing its own laws? How then does legal security exist in the connection-a connection which leaves Ireland incapable of being affected by the statutes of England, and leaves England perfectly free to repeal them?

I think I have shown the folly of that argument which measured the 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 rea 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; England 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 dependent 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 everything. 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 ad

vance: 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 the 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.

October 28, 1783.

Ir 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 a 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 illegalities and their profusion, 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,

* Mr. Flood's expression.

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 arts 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 had 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