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XXXIX.

verned not by deliberation, but discipline; and CHAP. Jicking the hands that feed, and worshipping the patron that bribes them, Degraded men! disgraceful tribe! when they vote for measures, they are venal; when such men talk against party, they are impudent." On the occasion of a motion made for an inquiry ento the sale of peerages, as ministers were accused of having set titles of nobility to sale, and of having applied the money thence arising to the purchasing of seats for their adherents in the house of commons, he thus proceeded: "We dare them to go into an enquiry. We do not affect to treat them as other than public malefactors, We speak to them in a style of the most mortifying and humiliating defiance. We pronounce them to be public criminals. Will they dare to deny the charge? I call upon, and dare the ostensible member to rise in his place, and say on his honour, that he does not believe such corrupt agreements to have taken place. I wait for a specific answer." Except an avowal, which would have been humiliating, no direct answer could be returned, The commanding of a majority in parliament by emoluments was well known; but how the government of this kingdom could be otherwise conducted might be another question; since every majority in parliament against the king's vice-gerent had a tendency to a political separation of Ireland from GreatBritain, The parliament was dissolved in the April of 1790, and on the meeting of the new, in the following June, Foster, the former speaker, was re-elected, X 3

Pro

XXXIX.

CHAP. Prorogued after a session of only fourteen days, it was re-assembled in the January of 1791, when the oppositionists were found somewhat diminished in number, but not in the vigour and pertinacity of their warfare, which they renewed on the same subjects; while discontent increased in the public mind, and political affairs took a new complexion from a surprising revolution in the most powerful kingdom on the European continent.

CHAP.

CHAP. XL.

-

Revolution of France-Its influence on Britain-And
on Ireland-Fiats-Anniversary of the revolution
celebrated at Belfast-United Irishmen-National
guards Rowan.
-Rowan Catholic convention-Catholic
deputation-Catholic declaration-Opposition to ca-
tholics Parliamentary transactions Catholic
bill-Other popular bills-Gunpowder bill, &c.-
Peep-of-day boys and Defenders-Attack of Wex-
ford-Reports of the catholic committees.

XL.

of France.

THE government of the mighty nation of the CHAP. French had, under the latter sovereigns of the long race of Hugh Capet, settled into an absolute mo-Revolution narchy, combined with a subservient feudal aristocracy, and supported by a vast military force. Long might it have so continued without interruption, if the monarchs had acted with prudence: but, by the mad ambition of Louis the fourteenth, who, in extending the surface, exhausted the strength of his kingdom; by the wars waged by his successors, with similar views, but inferior fortune; and by the inordinate expences of a profligate court, the debt of the crown became so enormous, that the prodigious

XL.

CHAP. taxes, imposed with the most unjust and impolitic inequality, scarcely felt by nobles or clergy, but pressing with intolerable weight on the poor peasants, were at length insufficient to pay the interest of the debt, and other demands of the state and royal household. From a vast complication of grievances, partly inherent in the political system, still more occasioned by misgovernment, discontentment with their governors pervaded the people, and, when the genuine liberty of the English, displayed in their neighbourhood, was contemplated, and the revolt of the British colonies afforded an ample field of discussion, a hatred of the constitution itself, under which they felt oppression, was diffused at first in silence, and afterwards more openly. Thus a republican faction, small in its commencement, but active and sanguine, gained gradually many proselytes; and, as men, who run into any one extreme, are always capable of running into the opposite, the nation, who had paid a kind of idolatrous adoration to their sovereigns, were in a short time led to act with atrocious licence, on the principles of a levelling democracy, to the abolition of monarchy and even murder of the monarch.

The clouds, which had been collecting in the reigns of his predecessors, were destined to discharge their thunder on Louis the sixteenth, who acceded to the throne in 1774, a prince mild and pacific, worthy of better fortune, than to suffer for the crimes of his ancestors, but not endued with a sufficient capacity and firmness of resolution to repress on one side the

arbitrary

XL.

arbitrary schemes of a court faction headed by the CHA P. queen, and on the other the projects of popular leaders, — some of which were of a dangerous tendency. In the perplexed situation to which the kingdom had been reduced, when to impose new taxes appeared impossible, to continue the mode of borrowing was to run swiftly into ruin, and to have recourse to œconomical reforms alone seemed altogether insufficient to remedy the evil, Calonne, the comptrollergeneral of the finances, conceived the patriotic and sublime scheme of augmenting the revenue by a new modification of the taxes, particularly by an equalization of the land-tax, extended to all denomina tions, nobility and clergy as well as commons, this purpose was convened, in the February of 1787, an assembly of notables, men of distinction, convoked from all parts of the kingdom, but selected chiefly from the higher orders, and nominated by the king. Of this assembly, considered as in some degree representative of the nation, and intended to sanction by its authority the new financial scheme, the members, more anxious for their several privileges than for the public prosperity, objected with acrimony against the minister's views, whom they hated for his attack on their privileges, and at length separated on the twenty-fifth of May, leaving the government still more embarrassed than it had been before.

For

Calonne was disgraced, and succeeded by the archbishop of Tolouse, much inferior in understanding, perhaps also in honesty, and utterly unable to mainfain a contest with the parliaments, which in France

were

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