sive spectators; and others, who act from passion and prejudice against the government of Ireland, might be willing to surrender all to the English government. Can those who are influenced in this manner be considered as proper persons to decide upon the measure? Is there no other influence? Has not one of the best and greatest friends of Ireland been dismissed from his office? What must be the effect of such dismissions? It is this— that, if you oppose the union, you are deemed unfit to serve his majesty. What is the inference that will be drawn, but that, if a person, whether in or out of office, should oppose the union, he will be considered as a traitor to his country? What must be the inference upon the minds of the officers and volunteers throughout the kingdom? That, if they dare to give an uncourtly opinion, they will be dismissed. I am willing to believe, that the noble lord, who is at the head of affairs in Ireland, was directed to do that which I have alluded to, and that it was not of his own accord. But to talk of free will under such circumstances is only adding mockery to injustice, and insult to injury.

Again, I contend that the adjustment proposed will only unite two wretched bodies; that the minds will still be distinct; and that eventually it may lead to separation. I wish to know what the right honorable gentleman opposite to me would say, if France should act to another country as we are acting towards Ireland? Let me suppose that aid was asked of France, not by a neutral power, not by Switzerland, to which she has behaved with such matchless perfidy; not by a mere ally, but by a country connected with her in interests, whofe subjects were fighting and bleeding for her all over the world; that her aid was solicited to suppress domestic insurrection, and to repel foreign invasion: I

suppose

suppose that she gives it bounteously, and that the country accepts it with gratitude; and afterwards we find France incorporating that very country into her own republic, one and indivisible. Would any person be more forward than the right honorable gentleman to treat with scorn and indignation the man who should defend such conduct? If too it was known here, that, when the officers of that country had used their utmost efforts to repress rebellion, a decree was passed by the directory to dismiss those officers from their employments, because they doubted the propriety of the measures of the government, would not gentlemen reprobate such conduct in France, and ridicule the idea. that such incorporation was with the free will of that country? The king of Sardinia has consented to the surrender of his territory, and said it was right; but does any one believe that the consent was real? The case is the same with respect to Ireland. You cannot have her real consent; you do not wish it, or you would not have recourse to corruption and intimidation. We hear much abuse of French principles; but what I would recommend is, to abstain from French practices. If we are to incorporate any part of the enpire, let us hold up the perfidy and the fraud of France to the disgust of the world, and let our conduct afford a direct contrast; let no suspicion be entertained that we gain our object by intimidation or corruption; let our union be an union of affection and attachment, of plain dealing and free will; let it be an union of mind and spirit, as well as of interest and power; let it not resemble those Irish marriages which commence in fraud, and are consummated by force. Let us not commit a brutal rape on the independence of Ireland, when by tenderness of behaviour we may have her the willing part

ner

ner of our fate. The state of Ireland does not admit such a marriage; her bans ought not to be published to the sound of the trumpet, with an army of 40,000 men. She is not qualified for hymeneal rites, when the grave and the prison hold so large a share of her population.'

That great danger would arise from the scheme, if it should be carried into effect, Mr. Sheridan was fully convinced; and, if it should fail, the peril of the enterprise would be readily admitted. But, from delay, no danger could arise; and it was incumbent on the chief projectors of the plan to state the reasons which rendered them so eager to press the adoption of it. As,. however, they had not explained their motives, he had been obliged to have recourse to the pamphlet which had been circulated as the proclamation of the Irish government. He represented this publication as very weak in argument, and offensive in point of remark. The author offered some reasons for dispatch; but, between the disorder and the remedy proposed by him, there was little connexion; indeed, it seemed calculated to inflame and increase the malady. The pamphleteer thought it the more particularly necessary to urge the union, from a dread of the continued influence of the pope and the intrigues of the British anti-ministerial party. It would, he conceived, completely detach the catholics from the power of the pontiff, and remove or diminish the opportunities of exciting discontent in Ireland by the arts of an English faction.

Mr. Sheridan now amused the house by animadverting on some of the observations of Mr. Cooke. His mode of quieting the catholics,' said the orator, is by making them desperate-by telling them that they have nothing to hope from the parliament.'-- Dissatisfac

tion

6

tion (says the pamphleteer) would sink into acquiescence, and acquiescence soften into content," A very pretty fentence,' said Mr. Sheridan,' for a novel! But what right has this author to assume, that, when the union fhall have taken away the rights of the catholics, their dissatisfaction will sink into acquiescence? How can he be so regardless of all experience, or of all established policy, as to conceive that such a number of persons can be content under an exclusion from civil rights on account of religious differences?'

Having argued this point, he ridiculed the remedy proposed for the factious spirit of the English opposition. If the speeches of the members to whom the writer alluded tended to inflame the senators of Ireland, to bring the representatives of that country into the very focus of sedition did not seem the most likely means of repressing the evil.

In answer to Mr. Cooke's argument against delay, drawn from the apprehensions of a natural termination of the life of a great personage, and the risque of a change of miniftry, Mr. Sheridan made no other remark, than that there was a want of delicacy in the allusion. With respect to the writer's allegation of the probable mischief of a disagreement between the legislatures, he observed that no material differences had occurred, or were likely to arise; that, in the affair of the propositions, we offered what was considered as a bounty, which the Irish rejected on account of the conditions annexed to it; and that, in the case of the regency, the two parliaments wished to have the same person on different terms. On the topic urgedby the pamphleteer, respecting the expediency of making use of a time of war and embarrassment to accomplish the wishes of Britain, in return for the ad

vantage

vantage taken by the Hibernian volunteers on a former occasion, and by the United Irishmen at a recent period, the speaker remarked, that the indignation of every man of honor must be roused by such an appeal to the spirit of revenge. These arguments of the official promulgator of the creed of the Castle,' he faid, 'weighed so lightly against the disadvantages of the measure, that he could not but condemn the precipitancy with which it was brought forward.

Besides the dangers which he had before mentioned as attendant upon the scheme, Mr. Sheridan stated the risque of changes in our political system, from the introduction of one hundred members into the British house of commons-members who, having sacrificed the parliament of their own country, might not be scrupulously tender of the British constitution.-He afterwards disputed the competency, of the Irish legislature to the sacrifice of itself. If such a right should be allowed to that parliament, it must also be supposed to belong to this; a circumstance which would tend to make the king absolute, and to vest in him for ever a vigor beyond the law. It had once been asserted by an able statesman, that, even if the lords and commons should agree to annul the charters of boroughs, the king could not assent to the measure. If this doctrine were true, the parliament of Ireland would not be justified in that transfer of itself which would violate its former constitution.

After some other remarks, Mr. Sheridan concluded. his speech with an amendment, expressing the surprise and deep regret with which the house learned from his majesty that the final adjustment, which, upon his gracious recommendation, took place between the kingdoms in the year 1782, and which, by the deelaration

of