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HENRY GRATTAN, ESQ., TO THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND

BURKE.

September, 1794.

MY DEAR SIR,-I was favoured with your letter of the 21st. I had left Ireland before the other arrived.

Surely nothing could be more unseasonable or improper than to appoint to the provostship any man who is not such as you describe, a statutable academical character. I believe that the new Irish administration will adhere to that principle. I judge from their character and their general intentions; and I do hope most ardently that they will stop the recommendations of the existing Government, if they should depart from that line. Report said that our present Attorney-General* meditated a retreat from the labours of the state to the government of the University. Should such a recommendation take place, I make no doubt it will be resisted. The late provost,† whom you knew well, betook himself to such a retreat; and for fifteen years of it never enjoyed the repose of a moment. An ingenious and an accomplished man, he was almost stung to death by intruding himself into the hive of the academy. The members

of it have a natural right to reap their own harvest, and to wear their own laurels. They are, many of them, of great learning, and best fitted to govern themselves. I shall not fail to mention the subject, if I see any danger of a foreign appointment.

I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Hussey, who told me that you had been so kind as to write to me to Ireland. He mentioned the subject of colleges as having interested your attention. On that, or any subject, I shall be most happy to receive your instructions, which I shall always reverence; and believe me, my dear Sir, with the greatest regard, yours most truly, H. GRATTAN.

HENRY GRATTAN, ESQ., TO THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE.

October 1, 1794.

MY DEAR SIR,-I think I know that it is the wish of the Duke of Portland to confine the provostship to the Universites, and I imagine no recommendation from Lord Westmoreland to the contrary will have the smallest effect. I can't say I have heard his Grace on the subject; but from what I hear, I think I may be certain of his sentiments. The Fellows of the University have sent a deputation; they were with his Grace some days ago. Whether there was not a job in that very deputation, I am not certain; but it was suspected that its object was to * Arthur Wolfe, afterwards Lord Kilwarden. † Hutchinson. VOL. V.

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direct the attention of Government to one who had been once a Fellow, but is now a married man, and a Fellow no longer.

The other point which has occurred to you is certainly of much moment also. It is absolutely necessary to allow the Catholic clergy a Catholic education at home. If they can't have a Catholic education at home, they can have none at all, or none which is not dangerous. I don't think any time should be lost; too much time has been lost already, both with regard to their education and Irish education in general; for which great funds, of public, royal, and private donation, have been granted and eaten. There is not one great public school in Ireland; and yet the funds are great, but sunk in the person of the master, who is a species of monster, devouring the youth he should educate and the charity he is entrusted to preserve. At the time when our Government were assuming public ignorance as an argument against Catholic emancipation, there lay before them a report of a committee with authentic evidence of this misapplication, in which they persisted to connive, in common with those false guardians of our youth who had great schools, no scholars, and had just interest enough to overbalance the chances of the rising generation. Such subjects are now peculiarly interesting, when the fortunes of the world are in the scale, and the intellectual order in some danger of kicking the beam.

We were afraid to touch the subject hitherto, lest administration might turn upon us, and swallow up all the jobs we would correct in one vast job of their own. Happy should I be, at any time, to learn from you on these subjects. You may-I hope not-but you may have lost the power of being happy; you retain the power of being eminently useful.-I am, my dear Sir, with the greatest regard and esteem, yours most sincerely, H. GRATTAN.

HENRY GRATTAN, ESQ., TO THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE.

March 14, 1795.

MY DEAR SIR,-You would have served them, but they were not to be served. You would have healed wounds, private and public. There is more wisdom in your ardour, than in their cold and over-reaching discretion. I lament it. I lament it on account of Ireland, on account of England, and on account of the best man I ever knew,-Lord Fitzwilliam. It is now the established principle of the British Cabinet, that Irish jobbers and Irish jobs are sacred; and that whatever redress we may look to, can be only obtained by peremptory and hostile demand. That Mr. Pitt should have behaved so, I am not

astonished; but that the Duke of Portland-the Duke of Portland,—a name I must persist, from my recollections of 1782, still almost to regard,-that he should have used us so,-that he should have deserted Ireland,-deserted his friend,-and have thrown the former into a fever, and have left the latter in solitude, is astonishing. No subject on which he was more decided than the removal of Beresford. He admired the facility with which Pitt had given him up. He entered with indignation against his system of jobbing; and I should have thought would have removed us, if we had not removed him. If he blames us for our efforts to correct abuses in the administration of Irish government, let him blame himself also, who told us that he undertook a share in the Government, principally with a view to correct abuses in Ireland. What are we to think of the faith of most reputed Englishman? What can his Grace say to his friend-to his friend Lord Fitzwilliam-whom he induced to accept the government of this country, in which he has been disgraced; and to his own relations here, whom he has left to a long opposition war, with every personal and every public provocation? But Lord Camden and Mr. Pelham are to heal all this. I doubt it. They will have the Parliament, but they have lost the nation. I had written a letter to Mr. Windham, but I did not send it; it had been of no use. I regard him much; I wish to stand well in his opinion, if any Irishman can stand well in the opinion of a member of the English Cabinet. Could I have hoped that these sentiments had any chance of being adopted by his brethren, I should have gone to England at his suggestion; but I apprehend there was a determination conceived long ago to extinguish the Duke of Portland's pretensions to a sway in the Government of England, and to remove his Lord Lieutenant on the first opportunity.

However, it is of little consequence now to speculate; the affair is over, and the breach irreparable. It gives me this opportunity of assuring you how much I feel as you do, and with you, and lament your good interposition had not the effect which it should have had, and would have had, if the benefit of both countries had been considered by any party in England.I am, my dear Sir, yours most sincerely,

H. GRATTAN.

Some of the observations above apply to the present state of Ireland.

No. 2.

THE History of the Union would be incomplete if the Protests of the Lords were not left upon record. Posterity will read the statements there made, and compare them with the results that followed the measure, and form thereon an impartial and correct opinion.

PROTESTS AGAINST THE UNION.

House of Lords, 1800.

RESOLVED, That in order to preserve and secure the essential interests of Great Britain and Ireland, and to consolidate the strength, power and resources of the British Empire, it will be advisable to concur in such measures as may best tend to unite the two kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland into one kingdom, in such manner and on such terms and conditions as may be established by acts of the respective Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland.

To which the following Protest was entered on the journals. 10th February, 1800.

DISSENTIENT.

Because, we consider the measure of an incorporate Legislative Union inadmissible; that it exceeds the lines of modification, or even of innovation, leaving in existence no principle of our Imperial Constitution as originally and fundamentally established, save only that of unity of Executive for both kingdoms; that any compact founded upon unity of executive alone, divested of the protection and controul of a distinct, independent, internal legislature, would be ipso facto a radical change from a free-balanced Constitution to an absolute Government of Ireland, by the British Parliament, as the relative situation of the respective kingdoms, in whatever point of view considered, renders it impossible for Ireland to derive any benefit from that species of representation on any scale of proportion, which the objects and nature of the Imperial Constitution of the United Kingdoms can admit of. It is unnecessary to state, that the Parliaments of the respective kingdoms as they have stood, and as they do stand, are not only fully competent to, but are the only constitutional organ of, any explanation or adjustment which may be found necessary for ever effectually to remedy or to prevent misconception or misconstruction as to any point whatever. We therefore find ourselves called upon

by our attachment, duty and allegiance to our most gracious Sovereign, by the preservation and maintenance of the just rights and liberties of our country, and by our affection and regard to our sister kingdom, to oppose in limine, by every legal means, the dereliction of a Constitution, which during the period of more than six hundred years has withstood the shock of every event; or the adoption of a system which, as it does in no sort apply to the relative situation of either kingdom, could not in its bearings, tendencies, operations and consequences, fail of destroying the inseparable joint interests of both. BELLAMONT.

BLANEY, by Proxy.

The following Protest was also entered on the journals.

Thursday, February 20th, 1800.

DISSENTIENT. Firstly. Because the resolution sanctions the principle of a Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland, without an opportunity having been afforded to this House of examining the details which are held out as an inducement for its adoption; details which have occupied the attention of those who have proposed the measure for a considerable length of time, and which, therefore, should not be hastily or without due consideration, acted upon by any branch of the legislature of Ireland.

Secondly. Because those details do not appear to us on such consideration as we have been allowed to give them, to proffer any benefits to this country of which it is not already in possession, or to any remedy for any of the evils which it at present has reason to apprehend.

Thirdly. Because the resolution proposes as a remedy for partial and temporary evils, an act which, if once adopted, binds us and our posterity for ever.

Fourthly. Because we consider the independence of Ireland and the security of her connexion with Great Britain, to be equally essential to the well-being of this country, and that we consider both as endangered by the measure of a Legislative Union.

Fifthly. Because the present constitution of these kingdoms, founded on the complete unity of their executive power, and the perfect distinctness of their legislatures, appears to us as happily contrived as the limited natures of human institutions can admit, to maintain national freedom in both countries, and unalterable connexion between both.

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