order of time which now seems to touch your condition. But I have tired you; suffer me to sit down, and thank you for your patient attention.

ANTI-JACOBIN WAR.

February 5, 1794.

On this day, Sir Laurence Parsons (afterwards Lord Rosse) moved, “That an humble address be presented to His Excellency the Lord-lieutenant, that he will be pleased to lay before His Majesty the humble desire of this House, that His Majesty will graciously condescend to order to be laid before this House copies of his declaration, together with copies of the several conventions and treaties with different powers which have been laid before the British Parliament, relative to the present war”. The motion was seconded by Mr. William Tighe, and was supported by Mr. Sergeant Duquery, Mr. Curran, Mr. Egan, Dr. Browne, Mr. Robert Stewart (afterwards Lord Castlereagh), on the ground that the Irish Parliament, as a matter of right as well as duty and interest, was bound to investigate the causes of the war. The motion was opposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir J. Parnell), Mr. Cooke, Mr. Barrington, Mr. G. Ponsonby, and Mr. Beresford.

MR. GRATTAN said: Sir, however I may differ from gentlemen with whom I generally concur, I shall this night, consistent with the vote I gave on the first day of the session in favour of the war, resist the present measure.

I do not doubt that the honourable gentlemen who introduced it had very proper motives. The motion before you, purports to be a motion for papers ; but the declared object of its supporters is to condemn the war—that war which those gentlemen pledged themselves to support, and for which they now declare themselves determined to grant the army and the supply. On the ground, therefore, laid for this motion, by those who have supported the honourable baronet, I shall give it a direct negative, as

:a tending to undermine your own proceedings, to retract your plighted sentiments, and to raise a mutiny against your own taxes. proceeding would, in my mind, bear a colonr of hesitation, unbecoming the honour of this country, and by such conduct Ireland would prove herself, instead of the best, the meanest ally of England. Some gentlemen, in support of the motion, have not indeed gone so far as to condemn the war, but have only desired to suspend their opinion until they receive the copies of the treaties, declarations, and conventions from England; and in the meantime they declare

Such a

themselves ready to vote the army and the supply for this very war, on which they declare they have formed no opiniou whatever. I dwell not on the folly of such a proceeding; I tremble at the mischief. What! tell France (an invasion inpending perhaps on one or both of these countries) that you have not made up your minds on the war: thus excite a diffidence on the part of Great Britain: teach Frante to consider Ireland as desponding, and induce her to intrigue with our people and attempt a descent upon our country; tell her, that you are waiting on a revolutionary-state opinion, until papers shall be sent from England, and a committee shall sit flagrante bello, and have made its report on the causes, considerations, and merits of this war. The period is said to be awful. If anything could make it desperate, it would be such a condition. It would be a promulgation to the troops on the coast of France, that we were not decided to stand by England, and that this was the moment in which the suspense of our sentiments was to be determined by some stroke from that country. Considering the principle of this motion in reference to Great Britain, you told her in the opening of this session you would stand by her in this war. You tell her now by this motion that you beg leave to consider it, and have therefore called for papers in order to form a deliberate judgment on mature and late consideration. Is not this a retraction of your former opinion? Is not this chilling your own efforts ? changing a positive pledge to support a war, into a languid disposition to inquire into its origin, while England remains, in the interim, in doubt, whether she can depend on you, whether you will not take the lead in the desertion, or, as has beeu the tendency of some speeches to-night, whether, while you affect to support her by your arms you may not damn that support by your censure, and declare thai you think France is in the right, though you support Great Britain.

As to your own people, see the effect of such a motion. You tax them for the war; you tell them at the same time, in this motion, that you have not as yet made up your mind upon the subject you profess an utter ignorance of the justice and propriety of those taxes, and enable the people to tell you that they are taxed by parliament for a war, the grounds, justice, and necessity of which that parliament declares itself a stranger to, and is only now in a state of inquiry. Thus you arm your own people against your own taxes by your own authority. I want to know, say gentlemen, whether this war is to partition France, to exterminate its liberty, and to set up the old constitution ? whether it is to be persevered in to the last drop of our blood, rather than treat with the existing government ?

and therefore I wish for treaties. What treaties ?-treaties which can resolve none of those questions, which will leave these gentlemen as free as ever to rail at the war. This, put in common language, is this—we want to have repeated opportunities of considering this war, first, by the artificial question of calling for papers,

and after, by objecting to the sufficiency of these papers, and by repeating the same question with the same insinuation against the war. And the best way of judging what use gentlemen will make of these papers, is by observing what use they have made of the motion for them—an attack, by insinuation or directly, on the wisdom, justice, or necessity of continuing the war. And the effects of such attacks if often repeated, must be to raise murmurs against your taxes. But gentlemen, aware that they wanted subsidiary ground, have said, they call for these papers merely to show their power of calling for treaties. The answer to that is, that the right in the Irish Parliament to call for treaties, to inquire into the causes, considerations, and condition of a war, is admitted on every side, in the fullest, broadest, and most unequivocal manner; but when the purpose for which these papers are called, comes out in debate to be the retraction of an opinion already given, or of a support already promised, and put this moment to be voted, there the House will object to the motion for papers, not on the principle of right, but because it objects to the use which is to be made of them. The House will see that the motion for papers under these circumstances, is nothing more than an artificial motion to bring into debate objections against the war, and the argument founded on the right of this House to call for such will then appear to be nothing more than an artificial argument, to interest the pride of this assembly in the abuse of an unquestionable privilege, which it proposed to abuse, in order to assert.

But, say gentlemen, we never had any treaties before us. You had the Spanish treaty laid before you, and must have every treaty laid before

if

you choose to call for it; but you will not call for any treaty merely for the purpose of retracting either a support which you have promised, or a sentiment which you have plighted. But are those gentlemen who call for treaties under pretence of information, ignorant, as they profess to be, of the state of the war? What treaty is necessary to inform them that France is sending an army to her coast, and meditates an invasion ? In such a situation are they to appoint a committee of inquiry to investigate papers, or a committee of supply to vote the army? Do not they, as well as any one know, that the cause of the war is now lost in the consequence; and that the question, supposing it ever to have been s question, is not, whether England will partition France, but whether France will invade England? I would not on this question give a silent vote, but rather meet directly any unpopularity which might attend the support I mean to give government; and I am authorised by my honourable friend (Mr. Curran) to say, that on the subject of the war his sentiments coincide with mine.

The motion goes to excite commotion instead of unanimity; yet in voting against it, I by no means bind myself not to inquire hereafter respecting the conduct and object of the war; but I consider the moment of going into the committee of supply a most improper one to institute such an inquiry.

The House divided on Sir Laurence Parsons' motion :-Ayes 9, Noes 128;. Majority 119. Tellers for the Ayes, Sir Laurence Parsons and Mr William Tighe. For the Noes, Mr. Marcus Beresford and Colonel Arthur Wellesley (afterwards Duke of Wellington).

WHIG REFORM.

March 4, 1794.

MR. GRATTAN said: The bill before you has been called a transfer of property. It is not so; the gentlemen who make the charge have not read the bill; it is not a transfer of the borough from A to B, but from A to all those who have the adjacent interests, landed or commercial, to all who have estates freehold, or terms for a certain number of years (for they must be included), or have carried on a trade for a certain time within a circle of twenty-four miles. If any one man has all the lands and towns within that circle, he probably will influence the return; but such estates are scarcely to be found in this kingdom, and when they are found, they will have their influence under any reform, unless you choose to rob the proprietor in order to amend the representation; and even in case of such estates, as in cases of great county interest, the return may be influenced, but it cannot be sold. This proprietary influence you may call the influence of the landlord on his tenants, but it is also the influence of the tenant on the landlord ; instead of being, as now, the property of that person who is not a landlord, and whose best estate is his twelve burgesses. This boroughmonger it extinguishes, and leads to a milder communication of manners, as well as diffusion of influence between landlord and tenant, with an additional teinptation of residence to the former, and improvement to the latter. It is, in short, an open of 200 seats to property, to talents, and to both mixed, to be elected by the yeomanry and citizens.

We have in this plan committed no violence on the principles of the constitution, and scarcely any on its geography. We have added one member to the counties and to the three cities, because we think the landed interest is not proportionably represented, and the ministerial interest beyond all proportion represented ; and we have extended the boundary of the borough, because we find in the old boundary nothing to represent. We have not extended the boundary to the whole of the county, because we would not extinguish or overbalance an integral part of the parliament—the citizens and burgesses; and we have extended the line beyond the borough, to a line of twentyfour miles, to encompass a mass of landed interest as long as land is productive, and commercial interest, if within twenty-four miles any commerce shall exist. As commerce shall within that district increase and flourish, its balance on the return will increase, and there will yet remain a great landed interest in the representation, even though commerce should within that district totally decline. Thus we have, as far as is practicable, provided against the effect of the fluctuation of property; we have not corrected oligarchy, as was erroneously objected to us, by oligarchy, but by aristocracy and democracy mixed. We have applied the principles of the English constitution to the state of Irish property, with a decisive advantage for the present, and with such growing advantages to the future, as must arise from the growth of commerce and the growing diffusion of riches. Weigh, then, the objections to the bill, and you will find they amount either to a depreciation of the principles of the British constitution in their application to Ireland, or to a demand for an agrarian law.

I do not say that this bill, in its present shape, is perfect. On the contrary, I should wish to propose considerable alterations; the franchise should be extended to termors for years, perhaps some others; the duration of parliament should be diminished ; the powers of the corporation to make voters totally extinguished. After these amendments, I do not say the bill would be then an exact representation of the property of the country, or of the propertied part of the community. No, because that is impossible, and that is unnecessary; no, but it would be a substantial representation of both; that is, it would answer all the political purposes of adequate representation; it would be quod erat desidcratum ; it would not be arithmeti