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Indies, West Indies, America, and with the official knowlciige of Ireland at her feet, has taken six months to deliberate, and has now produced twenty resolutions, with a history to each, amounting to a code of empire, not a system of commerce : I say, in such circumstances, for Ireland to subscribe this agreement, would be infatuation -an infatuation to which the ation could not be a party, but would appear to be concluded, or indeed huddled, with all her posterity, into a fallacious arrangement, by the influence of the Crown, without the deliberation of Parliament or the consent of the people ! This would appear the more inexcusable, because we are not driven to it; adjustment is not indispensable; the great points have been carried ! An inferior question about the home market has been started, and a commercial fever artificially raised; but while the great points remain undisturbed, the nations cannot be committed; the manufacturers applied for protecting duties, and have failed; the minister offered a system of reciprocity, and succeeded in Ireland, but has failed in England: he makes you another offer, inconsistent with the former, which offer the English do not support, and the Irish deprecate.

We can go on; we have a growing prosperity, and as yet an exemption from intolerable taxes; we can from time to time regulate our own commerce, cherish our manufactures, keep down our taxes, and bring on our people, and brood over the growing prosperity of young Ireland. In the mean time we will guard our free trade and free constitution, as our only real resources: they were the struggles of great virtue, the result of much perseverance, and our broad base of public action! We should recollect that this House may now, with peculiar propriety, interpose, because you did, with great zeal and success, on this very subject of trade, bring on the people; and you did, with great prudence and moderation, on another occasion, check a certain description of the people, and you are now called upon by consistency to defend the people. Thus mediating between extremes, you will preserve this island long, and preserve her with a certain degree of renown. Thus faithful to the constitntion of the country, you will command and insure her tranquillity; for our best authority with the people is protection afforded against the ministers of the Crown. It is not public clamour, but public injury that should alarm you; your high ground of expostulation with your

fellow-subjects has been your services; the free trade you have given the merchant, and the free constitution you have given the island! Make your third great effort—preserve them, and with them preserve unaltered your own calm sense of public right, the dignity of the parlia

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ment, the majesty of the people, and the powers of the island! Keep them unsullied, uncovenanted, uncircumscribed, and unstipendiary! These paths are the paths to glory, and, let me add, these ways are the ways of peace: so shall the prosperity of your country, though without a tougue to thank you, yet laden with the blessings of constitution and of commerce, bear attestation to your services, and wait on your progress with involuntary praise !

IRISH FEELING.

September 6, 1785. THERE are gentlemen who will call England the whole empire, and her exclusive power and domination the general welfare ; and the servants of government in Ireland may, if they would stoop to it, on such a principle, advance a pretence for abjuring every prejudice of their nativity, every special advantage of their own country, and for preferring the power of another land. Regard, I acknowledge, should be constantly had to the general welfare of the whole empire, whenever it is really concerned; but let me add, that general welfare should never be made a pretence, nor be artificially and wantonly introduced; and in an arrangement where Irish trade is professedly the subject, that trade ought to be expressly the object. I laugh at those Irish gentlemen who talk as if they were the representatives of something higher than their native land—the representatives of empire, not of Ireland; but so talking and so acting, they will be in fact the representatives of their salary. Let me tell those gentlemen, if they are not Irishmen, they are nothing; and if we are not the representatives of Ireland, we are nothing. I am the more averse to the revival of this bill or its principle, because such revival must be accompanied with a new negotiation—a negotiation wherein the British minister would be the ambassador for England and Ireland, or rather, the British minister would be the ambassador for England, and the servant of that minister would be the ambassador for Ireland; and where there is no personal equality in the negotiators, there can be no political equality in the result of the treaty. If anything could render the revival of this business still more alarming, it would be the doctrines which have been advanced to defend it. We have been gravely, positively, and dogmatically assured, that this country is, for the comforts and necessaries of life, for the rudiments of manufacture, and even for the element of fire, absolutely dependent on Great Britain ; we have been assured that we can find no coals, nor bark, nor salt, nor hops, anywhere, save only in Great Britain ; in short, that Ireland has no coals, nor the continent salt, bark, or hops, to the astonishment, and indeed laughter, of every merchant who heard such assertions. We have been told this, and we have been thus argued down into a state of physical slavery.

Ireland has been represented as the slave of England by the laws of nature, in order to justify a system which would have made us her slave by force and operation of covenant. We have been further told in debate and in public prints, that our trade has no claim to the protection of the British navy. Sir, you pay for that protection; you paid for it long ago; I tell you that payment was the crown of Ireland. You annexed the crown of Ireland to that of Great Britain, and have a right to the protection of her navy, as much as she has a right to consider you as part of the empire. Protecting you with her navy, she protects her own balance and weight in Europe, and preserves an empire which would else be reduced to an island. But if you are protected by an English, not an Irish navy, it is not that you have not granted taxes, but that Great Britain naturally chooses to have but one navy in the empire, and very naturally wishes that navy to be her own. You are prevented from having an Irish navy, and should not be reproached with the protection of the British; as gentlemen have triumphantly displayed the dependency of their native land on Great Britain, they have most anxiously concealed her value and importance—the importance of her linen yarn, bay yarn, hides, provisions, and men ; the importance of her assent to the monopolies of Great Britain, East and West, and to the continuation of the act of navigation. Under such false impressions, then, in those who are perhaps to act on the part of Ireland, an ignorance or concealment of her real consequence and resources, and the false persuasion of her insignificance and dereliction—nay, I will add, a zeal to display an offensive catalogue of her wants and wretchedness, I ask, what treaty will be made under these circumstances, that shall be to your advantage? Let me therefore caution my country against the revival of this bill, and against those arguments which have a tendency to put down the pretensions of Ireland, and humble the pride of the Irish nation. Public pride is the best champion of public liberty; cherish it, for if ever this kingdom shall fall in her own esteem, shall labour under a prepossession of impotence, shall conceive she cannot have the necessaries of life or manufacture, but from the charity of another country, in short, that God and nature have put her in a state of physical bondage, I say, if once this becomes her poetical mython sentiment, your laws are nothing, your charters are paper, and Ireland is a slave with magna charta in her hand. Let us not then put down our native land, and rob her of her pride, to rob her of her constitution.

TITHES.

February 14, 1788. A TENTH of your land, your labour, and your capital, to those who contribute in no shape whatsoever to the produce, must be oppression; they only think otherwise who suppose that everything is little which is given to the parson; that no burden can be heavy, if it is the weight of the parson; that landlords should give up their rent, and tenants the profits of their labour, and all too little. But uncertainty aggravates that oppression; the full tenths ever must be uncertain as well as oppressive; for it is the fixed proportion of a fluctuating quantity, and unless the high priest can give law to the winds, and ascertain the harvest, the tithe, like that harvest, must be uncertain. But this uncertainty is aggravated by the pernicious motives on which tithe frequently rises and falls. It frequently rises on the poor; it falls in compliment to the rich. It proceeds on principles the reverse of the Gospel; it crouches to the strong, and it encroaches on the feeble, and is guided by the two worst principles in societyservility and avarice united against the cause of charity and under the cloak of religion.

Here let me return to and repeat the allegations, and call on you once more to make the inquiry. It is alleged, that in certain parishes of the south, tithe has been demanded and paid for what by law was not liable to tithe; and that the ecclesiastical courts have countenanced the illegal exaction; and evidence is offered at your bar to prove the charge on oath.

Will you deny the fact? Will you justify the fact? Will you inquire into it?

It is alleged, that tithe proctors, in certain parishes of the south, do exact fees for agency, oppressive and illegal; and evidence to prove the charge is offered on oath. Will you deny the fact ? Will you justify the fact? Will you inquire into it?

It is alleged, that in certain parishes of the south, tithes have been excessive, and have observed no equity for the poor, the husbandman, or the manufacturer ; and evidence is offered to prove this charge on oath !

Will you deny the fact? Will you justify the fact ? Will you inquire into it?

It is alleged, that in certain parishes of the south, the ratages for tithes have greatly and unconscionably increased ; and evidence is offered to prove this charge on oath. Will you deny the fact? Will you justify the fact ? Will you inquire into it?

It is alleged, that in certain parishes of the south, the parishioners have duly and legally set out their tithe, and given due notice; but that no persons have attended on the part of the proctor or parson, under expectation, it is apprehended, of getting some new method of recovery, tending to deprive the parish of the benefit of its ancient right, that of setting out their tithe ; and evidence is offered to prove this charge on oath.

It is alleged, that in certain parishes of the south, tithe-farmers have oppressed, and do oppress His Majesty's subjects, by various extortions, abuses of law, or breaches of the same ; and evidence is offered to prove this charge on oath. Here, once more, I ask yon, will you deny the fact? Will you justify the fact? Will you inquire into it?

This being the state of the church in certain parishes in the south, I wish to know, what in the mean time within those districts becomes of religion ? Here are the parson and parish at variance about that which our religion teaches us to despise- riches. Here is the mammon of unrighteousness set up to interrupt our devotion to the true God. The disinterested, the humble, the apostolical character, during this unseemly contest—what becomes of it? Here are two powers, the power in the tenant to set out his tithe, the power in the church to try the matter in dispute by ecclesiastical jurisdiction ; two powers vested by the law in the respective hands of church and laity, without any effect but to torment one another. The power of setting of tithe does not affect to defend the tenant against unconscionable demand, and if attended with combination, secures him against any effectual demand whatsoever. The power of trying the matter in dispute by ecclesiastical jurisdiction, does not take place, except in cases of subtraction, and when it does take place, is a partial trial. Thus, as the law now stands, combination is the defence of laity, and partiality of the church.

The equity in favour of the tiller of the soil (a very necessary equity indeed) becomes a new source of disturbance, because the parties are not agreed what that equity should be ; the countryman not