was propounded, to remain silent and inactive; and with respect ti that other part of her trade, which regarded the duty on sugar, when the merchants were examined in 1778 on the inadequate protecting duty, when the inadequate duty was voted, when the act was recommitted, when another duty was proposed, when the bill returned with the inadequate duty substituted, when the altered bill was adopted, on every one of those questions I will suppose the gentleman to abscond: but a year and a half after the mischief was done, he out of office, I will suppose him to come forth, and to tell his country, that her trade had been destroyed by an inadequate duty on English sugar, as her constitution had been ruined by a perpetual mutiny bill. With relation to three-fourths of our fellow-subjects, the Catholics, when a bill was introduced to grant them rights of property and religion, I will suppose this gentleman to have come forth to give his negative to their pretensions. In the same manner I will suppose him to have opposed the institution of the volunteers, to which we owe so much, and that he went to a meeting in his own county to prevent their establishment; that he himself kept out of their associations; that he was almost the only man in this House that was not in uniform; and that he never was a volunteer until he ceased to be a placeman, and until he became an incendiary.

With regard to the liberties of America, which were inseparable from ours, I will suppose this gentleman to have been an enemy decided and unreserved; that he voted against her liberty; and voted, moreover, for an address to send 4,000 Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans; that he called these butchers "armed negotiators", and stood with a metaphor in his mouth and a bribe in his pocket, a champion against the rights of America, the only hope of Ireland, and the only refuge of the liberties of mankind.

Thus defective in every relationship, whether to constitution, commerce, toleration, I will suppose this man to have added much private improbity to public crimes; that his probity was like his patriotism, and his honour on a level with his oath. He loves to deliver panegyrics on himself. I will interrupt him, and say: Sir, you are much mistaken if you think that your talents have been as great as your life has been reprehensible; you began your parliamentary career with an acrimony and personality which could have been justified. only by a supposition of virtue: after a rank and clamorous opposition you became on a sudden silent; you were silent for seven years: you were silent on the greatest questions, and you were silent for money! In 1773, while a negociation was pending to sell your talents and your turbulence, you absconded from your duty in parlia

66

You

ment, you forsook your law of Poynings, you forsook the questions of economy, and abandoned all the old themes of your former declamation; you were not at that period to be found in the House; you were seen, like a guilty spirit, haunting the lobby of the House of Commons, watching the moment in which the question should be put, that you might vanish; you were descried with a criminal anxiety, retiring from the scenes of your past glory; or you were perceived coasting the upper benches of this House like a bird of prey, with an evil aspect and a sepulchral note, meditating to pounce on its quarry. These ways-they were not the ways of honour-you practised pending a negotiation which was to end either in your sale or your sedition: the former taking place, you supported the rankest measures that ever came before Parliament; the embargo of 1776, for instance. fatal embargo, that breach of law and ruin of commerce!" supported the unparallelled profusion and jobbing of Lord Harcourt's scandalous ministry-the address to support the American war-the other address to send 4,000 men, whom you had yourself declared to be necessary for the defence of Ireland, to fight against the liberties of America, to which you had declared yourself a friend ;—you, Sir, who delight to utter execrations against the American commissioners of 1778, on account of their hostility to America;-you, Sir, who manufacture stage thunder against Mr. Eden, for his anti-American principles;-you, Sir, whom it pleases to chant a hymn to the immortal Hampden;-you, Sir, approved of the tyranny exercised against America;—and you, Sir, voted 4,000 Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans fighting for their freedom, fighting for your freedom, fighting for the great principle, liberty; but you found at last (and this should be an eternal lesson to men of your craft and cunning), that the King had only dishonoured you; the Court had bought, but would not trust you; and having voted for the worst measures, you remained for seven years the creature of salary, without the confidence of Government. Mortified at the discovery, and stung by disappointment, you betake yourself to the sad expedients of duplicity; you try the sorry game of a trimmer in your progress to the acts of an incendiary; you give no honest support either to the Government or the people; you, at the most critical period of their existence, take no part, you sign no non-consumption agreement, you are no volunteer, you oppose no perpetual mutiny bill, no altered sugar bill; you declare that you lament that the declaration of right should have been brought forward; and observing, with regard to prince and people, the most impartial treachery and desertion, you justify the suspicion of your Sovereign by betraying the Govern

ment, as you had sold the people: until at last, by this hollow conduct, and for some other steps, the result of mortified ambition, being dismissed, and another person put in your place, you fly to the ranks of the volunteers, and canvass for mutiny; you announce that the country was ruined by other men during that period in which she had been sold by you. Your logic is, that the repeal of a declaratory law is not the repeal of a law at all, and the effect of that logic is, an English act affecting to emancipate Ireland, by exercising over her the legislative authority of the British Parliament. Such has been your conduct, and at such conduct every order of your fellowsubjects have a right to exclaim! The merchant may say to you— the constitutionalist may say to you-the American may say to you —and I, I now say, and say to your beard: Sir, you are not an honest man.

Mr. Flood rose to reply, but after having proceeded some length in his defence, he fell so much out of order, that the Speaker interfered. He declared how much pain he had suffered in permitting this contest to proceed, and that nothing but the calls of the House to hear the two members, should have made him sit so long silent. He requested Mr. Flood would sit down, with which request he complied, and shortly after retired. The speaker issued his warrant to apprehend the parties, and Mr. Flood was shortly after taken into custody. The House then directed that search should be made for Mr. Grattan; and the parties were bound over. It was then moved that the motion of Sir Henry Cavendish be taken into consideration, immediately after a report be made from the committee of accounts; and it passed in the affirmative.

COMMERCIAL PROPOSITIONS.

August 12, 1785.

HOWEVER, lest certain glosses should seem to go unanswered, I shall, for the sake of argument, waive past settlements, and combat the reasoning of the English resolutions, the address, His Majesty's answer and the reasoning of this day. It is here said, that the laws respecting commerce and navigation should be similar, and inferred that Ireland should subscribe the laws of England on those subjects; that is, the same law, the same legislature. But this argument goes a great deal too far: it goes to the army, for the mutiny bill should be the same; it was endeavoured to be extended to the collection of your revenue, and is in train to be extended to your taxes; it goes

to the extinction of the most invaluable part of your parliamentary capacity; it is a union, an incipient and creeping union; a virtual union, establishing one will in the general concerns of commerce and navigation, and reposing that will in the Parliament of Great Britain; a union where our Parliament preserves its existence after it has lost its authority, and our people are to pay for a parliamentary establishment, without any proportion of parliamentary representation. In opposing the right honourable gentleman's bill, I consider myself as opposing a union in limine, and that argument for union which makes similarity of law and community of interest (reason strong for the freedom of Ireland!) a pretence for a condition which would be dissimilarity of law, because extinction of constitution, and therefore hostility, not community of interest. I ask on what experience is this argument founded? Have you, ever since your redemption, refused to preserve a similarity of law in trade and navigation? Have you not followed Great Britain in all her changes of the act of navigation during the whole of that unpalatable business, the American war? Have you not excluded the cheap produce of other plantations, in order that Irish poverty might give a monopoly to the dear produce of the British colonies? Have you not made a better use of your liberty than Great Britain did of her power? But I have an objection to this argument, stronger even than its want of foundation in reason and experiment; I hold it to be nothing less than an intoIerance of the parliamentary constitution of Ireland, a declaration that the full and free external legislation of the Irish Parliament is incompatible with the British empire. I do acknowledge that by your external power, you might discompose the harmony of the empire, and I add that by your power over the purse, you might dissolve the state: but to the latter, you owe your existence in the constitution, and to the former, your authority and station in the empire: this argument, therefore, rests the connection upon a new and a false principle, goes directly against the root of Parliament, and is not a difficulty to be accommodated, but an error to be eradicated; and if any body of men can still think that the Irish constitution is incompatible with the British empire-doctrine which I abjure as sedition against the connection; but if any body of men are justified in thinking that the Irish constitution is incompatible with the British empire, perish the empire! live the constitution! Reduced by this false dilemma to take a part, my second wish is the British empire, my first wish and bounden duty is the liberty of Ireland.

But we are told this imperial power is not only necessary for England, but safe for Ireland. What is the present question? what but the abuse

of this very power of regulating the trade of Ireland by the British Parliament, excluding you and including herself by virtue of the same words of the same act of navigation? And what was the promovent cause of this arrangement? what but the power you are going to surrender the distinct and independent external authority of the Irish Parliament, competent to question that misconstruction? What is the remedy now proposed?-the evil. Go back to the Parliament of England. I ask again, what were the difficulties in the way of your eleven propositions? what but the jealousy of the British manufacturers on the subject of trade? And will you make them your parliament, and that too for ever, and that too on the subject of their jealousy, and in the moment they displayed it? I will suppose that jealousy realized; that you rival them in some market abroad, and that they petition their Parliament to impose a regulation which shall affect a tonnage which you have and Great Britain has not: how would you then feel your situation, when you should be obliged to register all this? And how would you feel your degradation, when you should see your own manufacturers pass you by as a cypher in the constitution, and deprecate their ruin at the bar of a foreign parliament! Whence the American war? Whence the Irish restrictions? Whence the misconstruction of the act of navigation? Whence but from the evil of suffering one country to regulate the trade and navigation of another, and of instituting, under the idea of general protectress, a proud domination, which sacrifices the interest of the whole to the ambition of a part, and arms the little passions of the monopolist with the sovereign potency of an Imperial Parliament: for great nations, when cursed with unnatural sway, follow but their nature when they invade; and human wisdom has not better provided for human safety than by limiting the principles of human power. The surrender of legislature has been likened to cases that not unfrequently take place between two equal nations, covenanting to suspend, in particular cases, their respective legislative powers for mutual benefit; thus Great Britain and Portugal agree to suspend their legislative power in favour of the wine of the one and the woollen of the other; but if Portugal had gone farther, and agreed to subscribe the laws of England, this covenant had not been a treaty, but conquest. So Great Britain and Ireland may covenant not to raise high duties on each other's manufactures; but if Ireland goes farther, and covenants to subscribe British law, this is not a mutual suspension of the exercise of legislative power, but a transfer of the power itself from one country to another, to be exercised by another hand. Such covenant is not reciprocity of trade; it is a surrender of the government of your trade, inequality of trade,

G