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material, the produce of their respective countries, above two millions in favour of England. Under the head of foreign articles, a great balance in favour of England. Add to this an absentee rental of considerably above a million, and you will find there is a sum of above four millions annually, in which Ireland administers to Great Britain, and pours herself, as it were, abundantly and without reserve into the British dominion.

This is the trade the minister threatens to alter, and thinks he threatens not Great Britain, but Ireland. Here he will have some difficulty; and first, the covenant of 1779. He denies that covenant; he says, that all the great commercial advantages of Ireland are to be ascribed to the liberality of the British Parliament, and not to the Irish Parliament. Wherever he meets an Irish covenant, he gives it no quarter. I will state the fact, and let the public judge. In October, 1779, an address passed the Irish Commons, containing a requisition for a free trade: it was followed by a motion declaring that the Irish Commons would not, for the present, grant new taxes; it was followed by a limitation of the act of supply to the duration of six months only. It was considered in England, and attended with resolutions moved by the then minister, purporting to repeal certain restrictive acts on the free trade of Ireland, and to grant a direct intercourse between Ireland and his Majesty's plantations, subject to equality of duty. These resolutions were considered in the Parliament of Ireland ;* they were voted satisfactory. A long money bill was then passed, and new taxes were then granted in consideration thereof, and this he calls no covenant. He has denied, it seems, the linen covenant; he has denied this commercial covenant of 1779 ; and he has denied the constitutional covenant of 1782; and having disclaimed the obligation of three treaties, he now proposes a fourth, in which he desires you to give up your parliament to secure his faith in time to come. I argue in a different manner; I argue from his disposition to dispute the validity of covenant to the necessity of the existence of parliament—an Irish parliament the guarantee of those covenants, which has the power to preserve the obligation, or resources to retaliate. Does the minister, when he talks of an eleemosynary trade, recollect how the Irish Parliament could affect the East India Company by discontinuing the act of 1793, granted but for a limited time? Does he recollect how she could affect the British West India monopoly by withdrawing her exclusive consumption from the British plantations? Does he recol

* See the resolutions and the law expressing the condition and covenant.

lect how we could affect the navy of England by regulations regarding our Irish provisions ? Does he recollect how we could affect her empire by forming commercial intercourse with the rest of the world? But let not this depend upon idle threats, threats which never should have been advanced on our side, if they had not been first most imprudently introduced on his. I say, let not the argument rest on threats, but let it rest on the past experiment; the experiment has been made; we got our trade by our resources and our parliament; we will keep our trade by affection and by covenant. But should a British minister choose to despise those tenures, we have another; we can keep our trade by the means by which we have obtained it,our parliament, our resources.

He speaks of the linen trade. On this subject, indeed, he has been answered, as he has upon the others, by the argument and by the experiment; the argument which proves that the bounty on linen was not granted for the sake of Ireland, and that Irish linen sells itself. But suppose his reasoning in this case to be as true as it is fallacious, what does it amount to ? That his country robbed Ireland of her free trade in the last century, and gave her, in the place of it, the export of one solitary manufacture, depending on the charity of England; and now he proposes to rob Ireland of that manufacture, unless Ireland consents to be robbed of her parliament! He has no other ground of triumph but the disgrace and dishonour of his country; however, her case is better than he has stated it; and that is proved by the experiment; for in 1779, we were encountered by the same threats on the same subject; we despised those threats; we put the question to a trial ; we entered into a non-consumption agreement; we demanded a free trade ; the free trade we obtained; the linen trade we preserved.

What he cannot reconcile to your interests, he affects to reconcile to your honour. He, the minister, “his budget with corruption crammed”, proposes to you to give up the ancient inheritance of your country; to proclaim an utter and blank incapacity, and to register this proclamation of incapacity in an act which inflicts on this ancient nation an eternal disability: and he accompanies these monstrous proposals by undisguised terror and unqualified bribery, and this he calls no attack on the honour and dignity of the kingdom.

The thing he proposes to buy, is what cannot be sold-LIBERTY! For it, he has nothing to give; everything of value which you possess, you obtained under a free constitution ; part with it, and you must be not only a slave but an idiot.

His propositions not only go to your dishonour, but they are built upon nothing else: he tells you, it is his main argument, that you are unfit to exercise a free constitution: and he affects to prove it by the experiment. Jacobinism grows, says he, out of the very state and condition of Ireland. I have heard of parliament impeaching ministers; but here is a minister impeaching parliament; he does more—he impeaches the parliamentary constitution itself: the abuses in that constitution he has protected; it is only its being that he destroys; on what ground? Your exports since your emancipation, and under that parliamentary constitution, and in a great measure by that parliamentary constitution, have nearly doubled; commercially it has worked well. Your concord with England since the emancipation, as far as it relates to parliament on the subject of war, has been not only approved, but has been productive; imperially, therefore, it has worked well. What then does the minister in fact object to ? That you have supported him; that you have concurred in his system; therefore he proposes to the people to abolish the parliament, and to continue the minister. He does more—he proposes to you to substitute the British Parliament in your place, to destroy the body that restored your liberties, and to restore that body which destroyed them. Against such a proposition, were I expiring on the floor, I should beg to utter my last breath, and record my dying testimony.

February 5, 1800.

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But the minister alleged that Jacobinism grows out of our situation ; and that situation he explains to be our separate parliament; and he thinks that enough. An ancient constitution and a recorded covenant are to be put down by that sentence. It is no longer a question, you see, according to him, of right or of treaty, but of convenience: expediency is to be the measure of both : and yet he will not say to England: Jacobinism grows out of a popular constitution, therefore strike out the people. His idea is a paradox; namely, that the spirit of democracy, which he means by Jacobinism, grows from the King, or from the chamber of the Lords, or from the chamber of the commons, in which aristrocracy has no small share of power.

In fact, his assertion is, that democracy grows out of monarchy and aristocracy, with certain popular mixture; that is, the excess grows out of the temperament; his instances are nothing; enough to say he thinks it. Jacobinism grows out of your constitu

excesses.

tion; and therefore down with the Lords, down with the commons, hew down the chair in one house, and the throne in the other, and let huge innovation enter.

Never was it known in the English constitution that the excesses of the popular branch were made an argument for destroying any integral part of the constitution, still less the constitution itself. The English cut off the head of Charles the First; was that made an argument, on the restoration, for putting down the popular branch of the English constitution ? James the Second put down liberty; was that made an argument afterwards for putting down monarchy? The Parliament of England, in the close of the present century, lost America at the expense of above an hundred millions of debt; was that made an argument for putting down parliament? Excesses committed by any one integral part of the constitution have never been urged as arguments for putting down that integral part, still less for putting down the whole; and, least of all, have excesses committed by the people been urged against the constitution itself, particularly where the constitution endeavoured to restrain those

I should be glad to know how he composes this Jacobinism at which he trembles. I really believe he means to impose a military government, and that his Union imports nothing less, and that the tranquillity talked of is the mere result of that intention. But he professes the contrary: he professes similarity of privilege : of course, he must leave the press of Ireland, and the power of forming clubs and associations in Ireland, on the same ground as in Great Britain, where both exist. Thus he leaves, or professes to leave, the powers of agitation, and takes away the constitution of parliament, which is to keep them in order. He does more : he leaves a provincial government or an Irish court without the control of a resident parliament; for the governments are not consolidated, though the parliaments are. He leaves that provincial court free from native control, and of course, with great powers of provocation and irritation, and the prospect of impunity. The ministers of Union will be the ministers of the country- a wise exchange; you keep your court, and banish your constitution.

You banish your constitutional and resident parliament, and, of course, the authority which is to restrain the abuse of power and the abuse of privilege, and this he calls a measure of tranquillity. He does more in favor of Jacobinism : he gives it a complete triumph over aristocracy. What is the claim or charge of democracy? That the upper orders are incapable to legislate for the country. You do not know the strength of your case, says the minister; you think

you understand Jacobinism, but I will convince you you are mistaken; you do not know how to overset the higher order, leave it to me; I will get that higher order to echo your charge; I will propose a Union, wherein the higher order is to proclaim and register their own inca

acity in the rolls of their own parliament. Thus, I think, as far as relates to tranquillity, his own plan is a refutation of his own argument; a false and fatal idea of public tranquillity I think it, to take refuge from your own liberties in the domination of another country, and to surrender, as a pledge of peace, a constitution which you have stipulated to defend with your lives and fortunes. That constitution I think I have shown to be adequate to the purpose of trade, and to be faithful to that of connection, but I do not think it adequate to the purpose of surrender. This introduces a new question, the competence of parliament to surrender the constitution. The project of Union appears to me to be nothing less than the surrender of the constitution. It reduces the Commons of Ireland to one-third, leaving the Parliament of England their present proportion ; it reduces the Commons of Ireland, I say, to one-third; it transfers that third to another country, where it is merged and lost in the superior numbers of another parliament; he strikes off two-thirds, and makes the remaining English; those Irish members residing in England will be nominally Irish representatives, but they will cease to be Irishmen; they will find England the seat of their abode, of their action, of their character; and will find, therefore, the great principles of action, namely, sympathy and fame, influencing them no longer in favour of their own country, but prepollant motives to forget Ireland, to look up to England, or rather the court of England, exclusively for countenance, for advancement, and for honours, as the centre from which they circulate, and to which they tend.*

I therefore maintain that the project of a Union is nothing less than to annul the Parliament of Ireland, or to transfer the legislative authority to the people of another country. To such an act the minister maintains the Irish Parliament to be competent, for, in substance, he maintains it to be omnipotent. I deny it; such an act in the parliament, without the authority of the people, is a breach of trust. Parliament is not the proprietor, but the trustee; and the people the proprietor, and not the property. Parliament is called to make laws, not to elect law-makers; it is a body in one branch of

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* Puffendorf says: When one commonwealth unites with another in such a manner that one keeps its government and states, and the subjects of the other change their country, and are taken into the rights and privileges of a foreign commonwealth, it is evident that one is swallowed up and lost in the other.