the eyes of a people, whom they loved and honoured. Difficult and dangerous as the situation was, he could not be induced from any apprehensions of personal consequence to permit a matter charged with so much apparent danger to pass unnoticed; at the same time he was not insensible of the unfavourable opinions of his fellow citizens.

He had many reasons of friendship and affection for wishing to stand well in the eyes of the people of Ireland; and it was not his purpose to attack the claim, which they had set up to legislative independency. They had not a friend in that house more warmly attached to their interests than himself. He wished to share the dangers and the alarming tendency of this bill both to the liberties of England and of Ireland, and he thought, to be silent on such a subject would be tacitly to assist in taking away from the people, in order to enlarge the prerogative of the crown, in demolishing and subverting the liberties of the subject, in order to give the prince a means of becoming absolute. He had been held out, he was aware, as the enemy of Ireland, and the first lord of the treasury had been declared to be the best friend of that country, though he had uniformly endeavoured to support the rights and liberties of the Irish, and to give them all they requested long ago, and which the noble lord had positively denied them till they had armed themselves, and then by three specific propositions had given more to force, than he had before denied to supplication. In better times than these, Mr. Fox said, he should probably have entered upon the topic in a manner and in language widely different from that he meant to adopt, and to use on the present occasion. In better times than these, he should have talked of the superintending power of the British parliament over Ireland, and over every part of the British monarchy; but such was the miserable situation, to which the king's servants had reduced this country, that the question was of a very delicate nature indeed, and it was by no means a matter easy to be handled without disturbing what ought not to be disturbed, and without producing consequences, which every man, who wished well to his country, must wish to avoid. In the present question, he wished to speak and act agreeably to the sentiments of some of the first and best men in the parliament of Ireland. The powers of supremacy and superintendency of this country over her distant connexions were topics, which he knew were at that time dangerous to be touched, but which had never been so at any former period of our history. Ten years ago it would not have been considered as improper or dangerous to talk on these topics, because then they were considered as necessary to the liberties and the well-being of the empire. They were not only considered by that house in this light, but by every part of our extended empire they were allowed and acknow

ledged the same. It was the weakness of administration, that had given rise to different ideas. America had never complained of these powers till her calm and sober requests were refused, and Ireland had not asserted the contrary till relief was denied, when her grievances were manifest. But now the topics were dangerous to be touched. The weakness and the wantonness of ministers had introduced into that house difficulties and embarrassments, new and unprecedented, and he must yield to the disagreeable necessity of submission. But he might say, that if he had been speaking on this subject ten years ago, he would have found no difficulty in saying, that the superintendency and supremacy of this country was necessary to the liberty of the empire, for many great, and, in his opinion, unanswerable reasons, and that in particular they ought to be careful never to give out of their own hands the power of making a mutiny bill. He would have been able to have advanced various reasons for retaining this privilege, the first and most powerful of which would have been, a reason of apprehension, lest at some future moment of negligence or corruption, the parliament of Ireland, the assemblies of any of the colonies of America, or of any other of our foreign connexions, should be tempted or prevailed on to grant a perpetual mutiny bill. If he had advanced this argument, he knew that it would have been immediately said of him, that he pushed speculation to excess, that he was chimerical and libellous in his ideas, for that no house of representatives could be so negligent or corrupt as to grant such a bill, and no people so blind and supine as to bear it. Might he not then now say this when it was not an argument of speculation but experience, and when the parliament of Ireland had actually granted a perpetual mutiny bill to the crown, by which they had invested the sovereign with the power of a standing army, unlimited in point of numbers or duration. There were in the passing of this bill, so granted, also several circumstances of a suspicious nature, which implied in pretty plain language, that it was imposed upon them by the cabinet of England. It originated in the privy council of this country, and was sent over at a time, when Ireland was loud in their claim of independent legislation. The cabinet took advantage of the heat and the inflammation of Ireland, with respect to independence, and granted them the one thing, provided they would purchase it at the price of the other. They applied to the passions of the country; they seized on parliament in the moment of their warmth, and appealing perhaps to other passions than those of patriotic phrenzy, they procured the consent of parliament to this, and received a perpetual standing army, in defiance of the declaration of rights. Many of the first members of the Irish parliament were sensible of the shock,

which that bill gave at once to the liberties of Ireland and England. Mr. Grattan called upon the people of this country to stand forward and protect the liberties of both, by preventing the dangers and effects of a law so violent and contradictory to the constitution. It was therefore a business, in which both nations were equally affected, and in which they ought equally to unite. It was a species of conspiracy between the cabinet and that part of the people of Ireland, who, anxious for independence, were intoxicated with the idea, and inclined to purchase it at any price. A conspiracy to give a mutiny bill of their own to Ireland, in return for a grant from Ireland of a perpetual army to the crown, a thing wholly unwarranted by the constitution. It was curious and alarming, that in the Irish mutiny bill, the preamble was left out, which recited the declaration of rights. What could be the inducement of that omission? It contained no enacting law, and consequently was in no ways an attack on the legislative independence of Ireland. It was merely declaratory, and as the constitution and the rights in both countries were the same, the declaration of those rights was equally applicable to both. But it was found expedient to leave out the preamble, because the words, "Whereas it is illegal in the crown to keep a standing แ army in times of peace," were in direct contradiction to the bill, which had been granted. The danger of the bill would appear in its full magnitude, when gentlemen reflected that all that was necessary now to the maintenance of a standing army in Ireland, unlimited in number and duration, was the power of the purse. He considered the statute of King William, commonly called the disbanding statute, reducing the number of troops to 12,000, and which by a late act had been raised to 15,000, to be still in force with respect to this country, but it was not so agreeable to the present ideas of the people of Ireland, so that there was no power sufficiently restrictive on ministers against maintaining in that country an army to any extent. it might be argued, that without the power of the purse, the power of the army was nothing. It had been the policy of Britain to keep them both in her own hands, and had granted them only for one year. As there was no responsibility in the ministers under the existing laws, and as it was not in the power of either kingdom to bring them to a legal parliamentary conviction, the ministers, who advised the perpetual mutiny bill, were guilty of high treason. The act giving the crown a perpetual mutiny bill, in direct violation of the declaration of rights, was high treason against the constitution of the realm. But how could he get at the authors of the treason in the present circumstances? It was perfectly impossible, for there was no responsibility to be established against them. This difficulty had been incurred by a sys

tem of negligence and incapacity. Any other minister would have softened, when it could have been done with propriety; or resisted, when it could have been done with success: but the noble lord had acted contrary to every expectation. When Ireland, in a decent sober style, applied to parliament for relief from restrictions, which were at once impolitic and illiberal, the noble lord attended more to the representations of individual members, influenced by their constituents, the manufacturers of trading towns, than to the unanimous call of a whole country. The minister was obliged, on account of the American war, to court the votes of individual members, and when the gentlemen on that side of the house had carried a decisive question, he came down two days afterwards, and resisted their anxious endeavours to redress the grievances of the Irish, when they were temperate in their requests. The honourable gentleman then stated the powerful and the rapid effect of the resolution and the spirit of Ireland. Their associations had done more in a moment than all the effects of friendship in their favour. All false reasoning had vanished; all little partial motives of resistance had ceased; local considerations died away instantly, and the noble lord in the blue ribbon, who had shewn himself the last man to listen to supplication, was the first man to give way to force. The noble lord came down to that house, and by three lumping propositions, did more for Ireland than she had ventured to ask: not that he blamed the noble lord for the concessions: he had acted wisely, and had properly told the house, that commercial considerations ought not to be taken up on a narrow illiberal scale, but should be looked at as great objects. All that he blamed in the noble lord was, for having done that meanly, which he might have done with grace and dignity. An army might thereafter be raised and maintained in Ireland under that law, which, though legal in Ireland, would be illegal in England, and not be the less dangerous, from being illegal. Soldiers raised, enlisted, and attested in England, might be sent to Ireland, and placed under the military law, which in one instance at least was different from the law of England, since it gave the king a power over them in every thing short of life and limb. Though an enemy to the dangerous influence of the crown, he was a friend to its just prerogative; and he considered the power vested in his majesty, of sending troops to whatever part of his dominions, that might require their assistance, a most valuable prerogative. It was on this ground, that the Earl of Chatham said, that retrenching the number of troops to be employed in Ireland, was "tearing the master-feather from the eagle's wing." That bill therefore, containing different laws, became dangerous to the prerogative. Many more things he had on his mind to offer on the subject, but he saw the impro

priety of urging all that had occurred to him. He was restrained by the consciousness, that every thing which he said would be misrepresented in Ireland, and that for the basest of purposes. He reminded the house again, that the Irish mutiny bill had originated in this country, and that it had passed under the most suspi cious and alarming circumstances. He concluded with saying,

that he should move for the recommitment of the bill, when the present question was settled.

Mr. T. Townshend seconded the motion.

The secretary at war spoke in very guarded terms of the extreme delicacy of the subject. It had been a great object in former reigns to endeavour to induce the legislature in Ireland to pass a mutiny bill, which had not been accomplished till the time of Queen Anne. The objects of that bill were the raising, paying, and due government of the army; the bill of Queen Anne went only to the first two objects, but it was a perpetual bill. In the year 1688 the first mutiny bill was passed in England, at which time an attempt was made to pass a similar bill in Ireland, which failed. In 1692 a bill passed the House of Lords, and was sent thither. The great Lord Somers was then attorney general; and every one knows how much the attorney general has to do with Irish bills in that stage. The great authors of the Revolution were anxious, that Ireland should have a mutiny bill of their own; and though many attempts were made to introduce one, it was not until it was known that they would not admit of one, that the word Ireland was inserted in the English mutiny bill. This bill was on the same principles, as that now the subject of debate; like that, it obliged the army to obey certain rules and articles of war, published, or to be published, and authorized by his majesty, and like that, it was perpetual; yet Lord Somers, and all those warm defenders of constitutional liberty, who were then in power, approved the bill. Those who had been deeply concerned in settling the Revolution, in framing the bill of rights, and all the measures of that most respectable period of our history, had concurred in their advice in council to approve their bill. It had been sent over to the Lord Deputy Sydney, with an injunction to endeavour to prevail, that it should be passed in both houses. It failed in the commons. The perpetuity of this bill in Ireland, he considered as necessary for the very reasons, that had been urged against it. It was certainly proper to prevent the great inconveniencies, that would arise from the army's being subject to different mutiny acts in different situations of service; yet it would be impossible to avoid it, if the mutiny bill were considered as annual, and subject to alterations in both countries.

Lord Mahon said, he was aware of the delicacy of touching upon the question of the superintendency of the British parliament