STAMP OFFICERS' SALARIES.

February 4th, 1790.*

On this day Curran spoke and proposed as follows:

I rise with that deep concern and melancholy hesitation, which a man must feel who does not know whether he is addressing an independent parliament, the representatives of the people of Ireland, or whether he is addressing the representatives of corruption: I rise to make the experiment; and I approach the question with all the awful feelings of a man who finds a dear friend prostrate and wounded on the ground, and who dreads lest the means he should use to recover him may only serve to show that he is dead and gone for ever. I rise to make an experiment upon the representatives of the peoplewhether they have abdicated their trust, and have become the paltry representatives of castle influence: it is to make an experiment on the feelings and probity of gentlemen, as was done on a great personage, when it was said, "Thou art the man." It is not a question respecting a paltry viceroy; no, it is a question between the body of the country and the administration; it is a charge against the government, for opening the batteries of corruption against the liberties of the people. The grand inquest of the nation are called on to decide this charge; they are called on to declare whether they would appear as the prosecutors or the accomplices of corruption: for though the question relative to the division of the Boards of Stamps and Accounts is in itself of little importance, yet will it develope a system of corruption tending to the utter destruction of Irish liberty, and to the separation of the connexion with England.

I bring forward an act of the meanest administration that ever disgraced this country. I bring it forward as one of the threads by which, united with others of similar texture, vermin of the meanest kind have been able to tie down a body of strength and importance. Let me not be supposed to rest here; when the

It is right to mention here, that on the 5th of January, 1790, John Fane, Earl of Westmoreland, succeeded the Marquis of Buckingham as Viceroy, and Mr. R. Hobart (afterwards Earl of Buckinghamshire), became Secretary to the

Lord Lieutenant.

murderer left the mark of his bloody hand upon the wall, it was not the trace of one finger, but the whole impression which convicted him.*

The Board of Accounts was instituted in Lord Townshend's administration;t it came forward in a manner rather inauspicious; it was questioned in parliament, and decided for by the majority of the five members who had received places under it. Born in corruption, it could only succeed by venality. It continued a useless board until the granting of the stamp duties, in Lord Harcourt's time:‡ the management of the stamps was then committed to it, and a solemn compact was made that the taxes should not be jobbed, but that both departments should be executed by one board. So it continued till it was thought necessary to increase the salaries of the commissioners, in the Marquis of Buckingham's famous administration.§

Then nothing was held sacred: the increase of the Revenue Board, the increase of the Ordnance, thirteen thousand pounds a year added to the infamous Pension List-these were not sufficient, but a compact, which should have been held sacred was violated, in order to make places for members of parliament. How indecent! two county members prying into stamps! What could have provoked this insult? I will tell you; you remember when the sceptre was trembling in the hand of an almost expiring monarch; when a factious and desperate English minister attempted to grasp it, you stood up against the profanation of the English, and the insult offered to the Irish crown; and had you not done it, the union of the empire would have been dissolved. You remember this; remember, then, yourselves; remember your triumph: it was that triumph which exposed you to submit to the resentment of the viceroy; it was that triumph which exposed you to disgrace and flaggellation. In proportion as you rose by union, your tyrant became appalled; but when he divided, he sunk you, and you became debased. How this has happened no man could imagine; no man could have suspected that a minister

Alluding to a notable conviction by circumstantial evidence.

† From 1767 to 1772.

Lord Harcourt succeeded Lord Townshend.

The Marquis of Buckingham was Lord Lieutenant from the 15th of September, 1782, to the 3rd of June, 1783, as Earl Temple, and from the 16th of December, 1787 to the 5th of January, 1790, as Marquis of Buckingham.

without talents could have worked your ruin. There is a pride in a great nation that fears not its destruction from a reptile; yet is there more than fable in what we are told of the Romans, that they guarded the Palladium, rather against the subtlety of a thief, than the force of an invader.

I bring forward this motion, not as a question of finance, not as a question of regulation, but as a penal inquiry; and the people will now see whether they are to hope for help within these walls, or turning their eyes towards heaven, they are to depend on God and their own virtue. I rise in an assembly of three hundred persons, one hundred of whom have places or pensions; I rise in an assembly, one third of whom have their ears sealed against the complaints of the people, and their eyes intently turned to their own interest: I rise before the whisperers of the treasury, the bargainers and runners of the castle: I address an audience before whom was held forth the doctrine, that the crown ought to use its influence on this house. It has been known that a master has been condemned by the confession of his slave, drawn from him by torment; but here the case is plain: this confession was not made from constraint; it came from a country gentleman, deservedly high in the confidence of administration, for he gave up other confidence to obtain theirs.

I rise, sir, to try, when the sluices of corruption have been let loose upon us, whether there are any means left to stem the torrent. Were our constituents now to behold us, defending the influence which has been avowed, they would suppose we were met to vote the robbery of the people, and to put the money into our pockets; that under the blasphemous pretence of guarding the liberty of the country, we were working for our own emolu

ment.

I know I am speaking too plain; but which is the more honest physician, he who lulls his patient into a fatal security, or he who points out the danger and the remedy of the disease? I, sir, am showing the danger that arises to our honour and our liberty, if we submit to have corruption let loose among us.

I should not be surprised if bad men of great talents should endeavour to enslave a people; but, when I see folly uniting with vice, corruption with imbecility, men without talents attempting to overthrow our liberty, my indignation rises at the

presumption and audacity of the attempt. That such men should creep into power, is a fatal symptom to the constitution; the political, like the material body, when near its dissolution, often bursts out in swarms of vermin.

In this administration a place may be found for every bad man, whether it be to distribute the wealth of the treasury, to vote in the house, to whisper, and to bargain, to stand at the door and note the exits and entrances of your members, to mark whether they earn their wages, whether it be for the hireling who comes for his hire, or for the drunken aide-de-camp who swaggers in a brothel; nay, some of them find their way to the treasurybench, the political musicians, or hurdy-gurdy men, to grind the praises of the viceroy.

Notwithstanding the profusion of government, I ask, what defence have they made for the country, in case it should be invaded by a foreign foe? They have not a single ship on the coast. Is it then, the smug aide-de-camp, or the banditti of the pension-list, or the infantine statesmen, who play in the sunshine of the castle, that are to defend the country? No, it is the stigmatized citizens. We are now sitting in a country of four millions of people, and our boast is, that they are governed by laws to which themselves consent; but are not more than three millions of the people excluded from any participation in making those laws? In a neighbouring country,* twenty-four millions of people were governed by laws to which their consent was never asked; but we have seen them struggle for freedom; in this struggle they have burst their chains, and, on the altar erected by despotism to public slavery, they have enthroned the image of public liberty.

But are our people merely excluded? No; they are denied redress. Next to the adoration which is due to God, I bend in reverence to the institutions of that religion, which teaches me to know his divine goodness; but what advantage does the peasant of the South receive from the institutions of religion? Does he experience the blessing? No; he never hears the voice of the shepherd, nor feels the pastoral crook, but when it is entering his flesh, and goading his very soul.

• France.

In this country, sir, our King is not a resident; the beam of royalty is often reflected through a medium, which sheds but a kind of disastrous twilight, serving only to assist robbers and plunderers. We have no security in the talents or responsibility of an Irish ministry; injuries which the English constitution would easily repel, may here be fatal. I therefore call upon you to exert yourselves, to heave off the vile incumbrances that have been laid upon you. I call on you not to a measure of finance or of regulation, but of criminal accusation, which you may follow with punishment. I therefore, sir, most humbly move :—

"That an humble address be presented to his Majesty, praying that he will order to be laid before this house the particulars of the causes, considerations, and representations, in consequence of which the Boards of Stamps and Accounts have been divided, with an increase of salary to the officers; also, that he will be graciously pleased to communicate to this house the names of the persons who recommended that measure."

After a long debate, Curran replied; the conclusion of the following observations refers to some vulgarly intemperate and threatening language, held towards him in the house, by Sir Boyle Roche and others :—

One member has boldly advanced and justified corruption as the engine of government; it is the first time that open bribery has been avowed, in even the worst of times, in this country; but the people now are fairly told that it is lawful to rob them of their property, and divide the plunder among the honest gentlemen who sell them to administration. As to the honourable member not finding much force in my arguments, I am not much surprised at it; they labour under much disadvantage when compared with the honourable member's. My arguments are not all on the same side-they are not stamped with that current impression which has so visible an effect on the honourable member's opinion-they are not arguments equally despised by those to whom he deserted, and those from whom he apostatized. They are not arguments compensated and disavowed, hired and abhorred. The honourable member [the Solicitor-General] has talked of intimidation. I see no intimidation in talking of the conduct of France. A great country asserting her freedom against the vices and corruption of a court, is a glorious object of generous emulation in every free assembly; it is only to corruption and prostitution