upright character, moved a direct resolution that "nothing but a Free Trade could save the country from ruin". The motion of Burgh was carried without opposition.

England determined upon a change of Irish rulers, and cent over the Earl of Carlisle in place of Lord Buckinghamshire, and Mr. Eden (afterwards Lord Auckland), in the place of Sir R. Heron. The latter change, so far as regarded the British interests, was decidedly for the better, as Mr. Eden was a remarkably clever man-shrewd, sagacious, and observant. But it would have been a difficult matter for any ministers to have repressed the advance of the Irish party.

Meanwhile, Grattan resolved to assert, by a resolution in the House of Commons, the right of Ireland to legislate for herself. Most of his friends and party dissuaded him from the project. He was not, however, to be turned from his purpose, and his imagination was excited by the glowing hopes of giving freedom to his country. He has himself said, “ Along the banks of the Liffey, amid the groves and bowers of Swist and Vanessa, I grew convinced that I was right. Arguments unanswerable came to my mind, and what I then presaged confirmed me in my determination to persevere”.

On the 19th of April, 1780, he made the memorable motion of a declaration of Irish right. His speech upon that occasion was the most splendid piece of eloquence that had ever been heard in Irelaud, and it vies with the greatest efforts ever made in the English House of Commons. He argued the whole question of Irish right with great ability-setting forward the most convincing proofs of its justice: but, in that department of the subject, he might probably have been equalled by more than one of his contemporaries; in what he surpassed them all, was the superior splendour of his style and the impassioned vehemence of his spirit. He not merely convinced, but he dazzled and inflamed. A great part of his audience caught the fire of his enthusiam, and when his speech was circulated throughout the country, the effect was prodigious. The mind of the country felt that it was addressed in a style congenial with its own character. The enthusiasm and imagination of the speaker was warmly sympathized with by tens of thousands.

1

Fox in acquaintance with the details of historical transactions and with the beauties of polite literature, Grattan was incontestably superior to his English Whig contemporary in profound and valuable philosophical accomplishments. For Fox* had the English dislike to all speculation that is abstract and remote from immediate application to affairs ; Grattan, on the other hand, loved to soar into those realms of thought which have been explored by the metaphysical politicians.

The influence produced on Irish affairs in 1780 by such a man as Grattan, it is easier to conceive than pourtray. Space is wanting in this memoir to enumerate all the effects of which he was the producer ; but briefly it may be said, that at the conjuncture of Irish politics during the latter years of Lord North's government, Grattan was hailed by his countrymen as the prophet of Irish redemption. He became a popular idol and the object of the enthusiastic affections of the people, who invested him with a popularity and applause, eclipsing the fame of all his contemporaries in the Irish Parliament. As Grattan introduced into Irish affairs an element of lofty moral enthusiasm, springing from his own impassioned and romantic mind, so was he in turn acted upon by the ordinary public passions of those around him, and in but a few months from his first motion for Irish independence, he reached the giddy and dazzling height of being recognised before the world as the man who impersonated the cause of Ireland.

The cause of Ireland! Words of singular significance, fraught with historical recollections of deep interest, and still portentous to all English and Irish minds which reflect upon the future government of these kingdoms. If ever that cause was to have died away, it ought to have been in the middle of the eighteenth century. Many of the old sources of Irish hatred to England were extinguished. There was no religious quarrel to exacerbate the Irish feelings, for the Catholics crawled on without political existence, without civil rights, or even the hopes of gaining freedom. There was no question of disputed succession, for the Jacobite contest was at an end. The right to property was acknowledged to lie in the Protestant proprietors. The Houses of Lords and Commons were Protestant, and their members professed political adherence to the principles of the Revolution of 1688. In short, one would have supposed that the country was assimilated with England, and that they formed the same political power. After the total downfall

of the Catholics one might have thought that England was never to hear again of the Irish nation. And yet the cause of Ireland, as a nation distinct from England, was never stronger or more prosperous than in those very times when (without any Catholic assistance) the Protestant and Anglican inhabitants of Ireland proceeded to demonstrate the existence, and vindicate the undying principles of that old historical quarrel. “Nation”, says the profound Burke, “ is a moral essence, and not a geographical arrangement, or a denomination of the nomenclator". That essence of nationhood was as intensely existing in the Protestants of Ireland, as in the Catholics whom they had trampled into

• According to Sir James Mackintosh, the three works which have most influenced the politics of modern Europe, are “ De Jure Belli et Pacis” (Grotius); Adam Smith's“ Wealth of Nations"; and Montesquieu's" Spirit of Laws”. The second of these great works wat never read by Fox, and he considered the last of them full of nonsense.

The fact was, that the mode of his mind did not suit the study of such treatises : his understanding was powerful and sagacions, rather than acute and subtle, better fitted for appreciating the actual and historical, rather than examining the abstract and speculative. He would probably have applied to Metaphysicians, what a celebrated scholar said of the Basque peoOle: “'It is asserted that they understand one another, but I do not believe it”.

dust. Time had only changed the champions of the cause of Ireland, the historical strife was continued with unabated ardour by the Protestants.

One cannot pass those times without remarking that much of Grattan's force in Irish politics was to be attributed to the conformity between his mind and the genius of his countrymen. He may be considered as the first great representative of Irish eloquence, and though Burke possesses the superiority as a statesman, Grattan carries the palm as the greater orator. The eloquence of Burke in the British senate has often been characterized (and with justice) as Irish oratory. Indeed, any one that consults the English ministerial writers, who drudged in the service of George Grenville, may be amused by the mode in which they attack Burke as an Irishman. But Grattan was not, as many have idly said, a pupil of Burke in oratory. His style was far more dramatic, more startling, more picturesque, and much less prolix. It was not prone to run into dissertation, and was always calculated to move the passions, while it appealed to the judgment of the audience. As a public speaker, it must be confessed, with all admiration for his intellect, that Burke was frequently wearisome. His speeches were made to be read, and not to be spoken. But Grattan contrived with singular genius to be always original, generally profound, and never tiresome.

It would be a trite subject nowadays to enter into the critical merits of the eloquence of those great men who illustrated the close of the eighteenth century, but it may be enough here to say that Grattan was original and creative, and / was the tame follower of no man in his eloquence and politics. He was himself at all times.

Amongst the moral qualities that we can trace as having contributed to Grattan's vast public success, there was one deserving particular notice.

He appears to have had more vigour of will than most of his patriotic contemporaries. His physical and moral courage were of a very high order. Even when he was most dispirited and shattered in his physical frame, he seemed to have retained a certain fierce audacity of spirit, which rather courted danger than shrunk from it. Indeed, if one may be permitted to criticise his personal courage, he had too much of the dare-devil. Though brilliant, cultivated, and polite, there was a latent audacity in his character, which made him formidable even to the execrable bullies who then infested Irish society. At that time the ferocious and bloodthirsty principles of the “ Fire-eating code" were recognised in Irish society, and to those principles Grattan lent all the influence of his example. His position in Irish politics was in some respects rather singular. Without great property or very high social connection, he affected to lead the Irish parliament. In any age of Irish history, no other Irishman of the same moderate social pretensions aspired to such a leading part as Grattan. To play! that part, the Chatham of Ireland required no ordinary resolution. Mere political genius or proficiency in parliamentary eloquence would not have sufficed. A vigorous will, and a capacity for self-assertion, were required ; and with those

i qualities Grattan was eminently endowed.

It is the province of the historian, and not of a commentator, to detail the events of the Irish Revolution of 1782. It is enough here to remark, that though tho thought of Irish liberty did not proceed from the Volunteers, yet unquestionably! the ideas were realised only by the means of exhibiting force. Everywhere throughout the island, the public spirit was wrought up to extraordinary excitement. Indeed the political proceedings of the years that immediately preceded 1782, chiefly consisted in the enlistment and frequent reviewings of the Volunteers, who had chosen Lord Charlemont as their general. The

Volunteers became, if not de jure, at least de facto, a national standing army ; they assisted in the maintenance of public order, escorted the Judges of Assize, conveyed prisoners to gaol, and moved from place to place. The first noblemen of the country were at their head: in the North, Lords Charlemont and Erne; in Connaught, Lord Clanricarde ; in Munster, Lords Kingsborough, Inchiquin, and Shannon, commanded large bodies of armed militia, which existed without the concurrence of the Crown. Yet, neither morally nor technically could disloyalty have been imputed to them. They were not republicans, like the insurgent Americans : with the exception of a few corps in the North, they had as little of the anti-king feeling in their composition, as they had of the irreligion of the French Revolutionists. Their intensity was Irish, and not democratic; their purpose national rather than convulsive. They aimed at a redistribution of political power within these islands ; but, unlike the revolutionists of France or America, they did not embody ideas calculated to spread through society, and influence the moral character of mankind. Considered discursively, their political principles were those of the Revolution of 1688; their leaders did not differ from those views of political liberty entertained by the English Whigs. They put forward doctrines which came under the ban of an imperial rather than a social Alarmist, and rendered themselves obnoxious to the authority of a William Pitt, representing English will and administering the British empire, rather than to the moral censure of a Burke, philosophising upon politics. It cannot be too distinctly maintained, that whatever moral power was in the volunteers and their leaders, was derived from a national source. The “moral essence" of nationhood was their vivifying spirit.

For uttering the feelings of such a party, Grattan was exactly the man required. He had an enthusiastic passion for Ireland, and at the same time he desired connexion with England. He was himself what is called in politics

Whig of the Revolution", equally opposed to the absolutism of the Tory, or the ultra-liberalism of the Radical. He was a stanch enemy of Lord Chatham's great bugbear, “the House of Bourbor". He did not wish the British power should diminish, except in Ireland, for then Europe would have been at the mercy of France.

He wished that Irish society should be moulded into the same society as that existing in England, but that its colour should be Irish, and its spirit" racy of the soil”. He desired that Ireland should have a nationality, moral and historical, distinct from that of England; but he placed bounds upon its political ambition. He would have had Irish manners, Irish traditions, Irish affections, Irish literature, Irish art, but he would not have had an Irish sovereign, except in conjunction with England.

This is not the place to examine whether such ideas could ever be permanently realised : it is not within the narrow limits of this memoir that we can examine whether such splendid aspirations for objects apparently contradictory, ought to be called ideas, or whether they were the phantoms of a poetical fancy kindled by a patriotic heart. Be it enough to say here, that they were Grattan's views on Ireland; they were the aspirations of the Irish statesmen of 1782; but they were as totally distinct from the ideas subsequently put forward by Theobald Wolfe Tone, as from those of Lord Castlereagh. Grattan was the national Whig of Ireland, and thus in politics he must be judged.

After the country had been thoroughly roused by Grattan and his friends, it was evident that war should soon take place with England, unless the Irish claims were conceded. The Volunteers held their famous meeting at Dungannon on the 15th of February, 1782, and the celebrated Resolution, drawn up by Grattan, was passed unanimously :-"Resolved, that a claim of any body

a

ܪ

of men other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, to make laws to bind this kingdom, is unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance".

The next resolution, directed against Poyning's Law, originated with Flood. But there was a third resolution, started by Henry Grattan, that made less noise at the time, but which must not be forgotten : it was one in favour of the oppressed Catholics, and ran in the following terms :"Resolved, that we hold the right of private judgment in matters of religion to be equally sacred in others as well as in ourselves ; that we rejoice in the relaxation of the Penal Laws against our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and that we conceive the measure to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the union and prosperity of the inhabitants of Ireland".

These resolutions spread throughout all Ireland, and were adopted not merely by shouting thousands, by assemblages numerically formidable, but by armed regiments of Protestants and owners of the soil, and by the Grand Juries assembled at the Assizes. What never before (or since) was seen in Ireland, then took placenamely, unanimity amongst all parties and creeds in the cause of their common country.

In the spring of 1782, the Ministry of Lord North fell amidst universal unpopularity. Lord Rockingham, after some delay, was made Prime Minister, and all the sections of the Whig party became united. Fox and Lord Shelbourne were made Secretaries of State ; Burke was appointed Paymaster of the Forces; the Duke of Portland was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Colonel Fitzpatrick was made Chief Secretary. The new Lord Lieutenant was a shuffling, vacillating, insincere nobleman, of much infirmity of purpose, but not destitute of low cunning.* Fitzpatrick, the Chief Secretary, was a spirited and accomplished person, of open and manly character, and well deserving to be popular. But though British interests were served by the dismissal of Lord North from power, the new Government found hopeless difficulties to contend with in Ireland. There were not five thousand of the King's troops in the island, and there were nearly one hundred thousand Volunteers, filled with a passion for liberty, whose hopes too had been long deferred, and who eagerly demanded their freedom.

In such circumstances, Charles Fox, the principal man of the new Whig Government, determined to see what skilful diplomacy might accomplish. He saw that there was nothing to be done, except to resist the Irish by arms, or to master them by policy, and he was not without hopes of doing the latter. For that purpose he resolved to gain time upon the Irish leaders, and trust to the providence of events for giving him some means by which he might save England from the concession of liberty to Ireland. For both he and Edmund Burke considered the Irish claims as most dangerous to England.

And it is not to be denied that Fox was very near triumphing over the Irish leaders; in fact, he would have done so but for Henry Grattan. The English Whig Government had numerous personal friends amongst the Irish patriots. Fitzpatrick was a scion of an Irish family, that for centuries had been Lords of Upper Ossory. Burke had many leading friends in the Irish House of Commons, and several of Fox's adherents in England were Irishmen, as, for example, Sir Philip Francis, Colonel Barré, Mr. Sheridan, Courtney, and many others. All the force of party connexion and personal friendship was immediately put in action by Fox. He saw the difficulty of his position, and like a strong man rose with the emergency.

* This character of the Duke of Portland receives painful confirmation from the recently published memoirs of Lord Malmesbury,