charity, which have been so long fostered by your liberal en couragement.

"The prosperity and resources of the kingdom, so highly improved by your meritorious care, still remain unimpaired by the pressure of the war; and I trust to your unremitting attention for the further advancement of your national prosperity.

"You have learned the steps which His Majesty has taken to procure the blessings of general peace upon a solid and permanent basis. Should these gracious endeavours of His Majesty not be followed by the success which he has every reason to expect, he is satisfied that the affections, courage, and perseverance, of his people, will enable him to frustrate the designs of our enemies, and to maintain the honour and dignity of his crown.

"It will afford me the highest satisfaction to be aided, at this important crisis, by your advice, and I rely with a confidence you have taught me to indulge, upon your liberal interpretation of my conduct, and upon that support I have so amply experienced since I received His Majesty's commands to repair to this country; and it will be peculiarly gratifying to me, if I should have the good fortune, in the administration of the King's government, to impress upon your minds the full extent of His Majesty's paternal care of this kingdom, and of my own anxiety to promote, by every means, its interests, its safety, and its prosperity."

Mr. Vesey moved the address, and was seconded by Colonel Bagwell.

MR. GRATTAN objected to the speech: it contained no reconciling matter, no expectation of commercial benefits, and did, in a great measure, bespeak a false confidence in our re sources both in commerce and revenue.

He lamented extremely that the outrages against the Catholics in the north had been so slightly dwelt on. He could not conceive that government, with all the powers it now possessed, should not have been able to quiet that part of Ireland; he heard the mob had a confidence in the lenity of government, founded on the sympathy of religion between the Castle and the Orange-men, and that the latter had, therefore, under the presumption of connivance, continued to commit most daring outrages. To suppose that government was inadequate to suppress this insurrection, when it has shown itself not adequate only, but unrestrained in putting an end to other insurrections, was to allow government more indulgence than it deserved. He did not approve of that expression in the speech which represented these raging atrocities in the north, as a disturbance not entirely suppressed. Such tenderness of language to such enormous practices against the poor and the industrious, betrayed an indifference in the government to the protection of the lower

orders of His Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects. He was an enemy to equality of property, but a friend to equality of protection; and, in his opinion, the best method of preventing equality of property was to afford equality of protection.

He then proceeded to consider the subject of the war. Hewas extremely glad that the minister had sent an ambassador to Paris to apply for peace, partly because he did not imagine that he was capable of conducting the war, and when, by misconduct, war is rendered hopeless, peace is rendered necessary; partly because, for this country, in its present discontented state, a discontent the result of disappointment, peace, he believed, very eligible. He observed on the successes of the Austrians, which were as brilliant as they were seasonable; but he requested the House to consider the situation of the empire notwithstanding those successes; Italy conquered; the left bank of the Rhine at present in the hands of France; Savoy annexed; the Alps and the Rhine her boundary; the confederacy (the Emperor only excepted) dispersed; the Spaniard in alliance with France, probably at war with England; the British excluded from the ports of Europe; the fall of the funds; and the durable and consolidated state of the French republic; - this appears to be the case on the comparative view of the campaign. But what was Our situation on the whole of the war? the loss of Holland; the deposition of the Stadtholder; the acquisition to France of the Belgic provinces, and a great part of Germany, accompanied with immense losses of men, and an increase of debt exceeding 100,000,000l. Having considered the minister's ill success, he begged to contemplate the powers which were wasted on him. Father of Mercy! what were they at the opening of the war? and first, all Europe, various in her views and various in her exertions; but there she was, with immense armies in perfect discipline, pouring on a single country in a state of complete anarchy; there was, beside the special exertion of the British empire, Parliament unbounded in its grants, unlimited in its confidence, and as patient as it was profuse, (bringing alternately to the throne, loan in one hand, and liberty in the other). There was the city of London, with her Amalthean horn; there was the landed interest with its fears, and the commercial interest with its confidence; there was the aristocracy with whatever it possessed of inert property and inert talent, loans, votes of credit, anticipations, indemnity following anticipations and following every encroachment on law, where Parliament had omitted to legalize by anticipation, encroachment on liberty.

There was also Ireland; poor, plundered, insulted, and forgiving Ireland! and though represented by certain minions as

"easily raised and easily put down*," pouring into the fleets and armies until she was forced to leave herself without a soldier for her ministers' ill-fated and wide-wasting West India expedition; where those ministers, by their plan and their delay, supplied the place of plague, pestilence, and famine. Loans granted more in one year than she granted to any one minister in the course of any former war. How they have requested is another question; in short every thing but her confidence. They had every thing from the two islands which an old country that was relaxed, and a young one that was ill-administered, could afford, (every thing in England but enthusiasm, and in Ireland every thing but the good opinion of the people; and all to send an ambassador to ask peace of the French republic!) and after such assurances of victory and of compensation: some of them he begged to repeat. They had said that this would be a brief and brilliant war; in the first year the French took Austrian Flanders, and drove the English off the continent. In the third they took Holland, and now Italy and both banks of the Rhine in the fourth year of this brilliant and brief war, which still continues, but with this difference, that England, instead of being at the head of a confederacy, stands almost alone, and France, instead of standing alone, having given proofs that she does not want a confederacy, stands at the head of a confederacy, composed of the old allies of England, the Dutch and the Spaniard; and instead of defending Paris against the British minister, threatens these islands with the arms of her republic; or rather, instead of being partitioned by the kings of the earth, the kings (many of them are reduced to the state of petty princes) become tributary to her; that is, to a democratic republic now in appeal to their subjects against their princes, who are thus deposed in the opinion of their own people, and preside over nominal monarchies, but concealed and contingent republics.

This is extraordinary, but this is not so extraordinary as that the ministry beginning this war with such a prophecy, and conducting it to such a catastrophe, should yet have such confidence in the corruption of the constitution, that they should call on the politeness of the Parliament to thank them for the ruin of the empire. They did not confine themselves to one prophecy or one assurance. The minutes of the debates are scribbled over with monstrous tales of this sort; but on the finances, where they were more at home, the fallacy was more superb and magnificent. They had been guilty of the crime of inducing their country to continue the war by a false confidence in French bankruptcy; year after year had

* The expressions of the Attorney-general in the debate on the commercial propositions.

they stated that France was on the verge of bankruptcy, till the last year, when they pronounced her to be in the gulf; from that gulf issue five armies, one in Holland, two in Italy, and two on the Rhine, who drive the Austrians out of Italy, drive them a second time out of Italy, drive them in another part of the globe to the Danube; in the course of a few first months of the compaign fight twenty battles, conquer five crowned heads, and turn the English out of the ports of Europe; while poor England, with a group of dupes, her ministers, prophets, and financiers, standing as it were on the rock of public credit to see the fulfilling of her minister's perdictions, and enjoy the shipwreck of her enemies, she sees her allies dispersed, her funds, that old vanity, down, drop, fathom after fathom, like a falling devil, until they tumble below that point of depression which at that very moment some of her administration had stated as the misery and reproach of the ministry of the American war.

See the difference! says an eloquent minister*; it is difficult to do justice to the beauty of his expression, impossible to do justice to its falsehood; see the difference between the wellregulated efforts of the surplus of capital, and the exhausting and extorted contribution of the capital itself! 100,000,000%. in the three first years of the war, the surplus of capital!! as well might you call the men lost, indeed murdered in this war, the surplus of your population. It is true, you have not fought with the whole of your people, nor their fortunes, nor their hearts; before they give you the whole of their population and property, you must give some share in your constitution, but you have given them a share in your disgraces and your debts, and have gotten from them such a share of their money as was not indeed sufficient to conquer the enemy, but entirely sufficient to exhaust the people. See the difference, says one of the ministers, between the effort of surplus and the contributions of capital; we open our eyes to see the difference, and the deception: previous to the falsification of this foolish prediction came out the fabrication of another. I know not what to call it, assurance or prophecy; soliciting an immence confidence in her resources, to arise from an immense exhibition of the increase of her revenue, viz. the growth of her trade, and the rise of her stocks. Scarce had he articulated, down went her stock, away went her allies, every port in Europe was shut against her trade, Suabia, Bavaria, the Palatinate, the Popedom, her riches, arts, and antiquities, fall into the hands of France, to fill the gulf of bankruptcy; her armies, the children of the gulf,

* Mr. Pitt.

are in the plains of Lombardy; the ministers of England did not foresee this; they were thinking of finance; they had forgot contribution; they forgot conquest; they considered the resources of a great country in the spirit of a stock-jobber; they understood the ally, but not the war. Can you conceive any situation more calamitous than that of an unfeeling cabal, whom the people of England persist to tolerate as the ministry, assuring their country that the enemy was exhausted, being on the eve of efforts, on the part of that enemy, exceeding any thing before attempted by herself, or in the same time by any other nation; efforts which probably would not have been called, but for their fatal perseverance in a desperate war; a perseverance, the result of their assurances, and a despair, the result of their incapacity. I say can you conceive any thing more blasted than the situation of men making such assurances, except the same men, after the falsification of those assurances, and the refutation of their prophecies, coming back to the same body (who had been at once the dupe and witness of their fallacy), and to another body (who had been the witness of their fallacy and the subject of their insolence), to ask from both for sanction and support, that they may have fresh opportunities to repeat their falsehoods, and multiply their offences.

Let us suppose that every thing was misfortune and nothing fault, and before we can make for ministers so favourable a supposition, we must be inspired by that spirit of truth which moved the King of Prussia, in his dealing with the minister, and the minister in his dealing with his colleague, and both in their dealings with Ireland. Supposing for instance, that it was necessary to have besieged Dunkirk, and proper for such a business to have divided the army, that it was wise to have added to all the other expeditions, that to St. Domingo; and, at a late period, with all the dilatory circumstances attending it, proper to have made the descent on Quiberon, after the suppression of the Vendeans, and that of Isle Dieu, after the defeat at Quiberon; supposing all these ridiculous suppositions, that is, allowing that the war was from the first desperate, and that the ministry were ignorant of its nature, and ignorant of their ignorance, giving the palm to their rival, who appears, on this supposition, less than a minister, but more than a prophet, and who obtained a victory over their understanding, before the French obtained a victory over their arms; allowing all this, and excusing all this, forgiving them their ignorance at the outset, what will you say of their falsehood in the sequel? why their false assurances? why accompany,