patriots on the next day, testifying their ardent and inviolable attachment to his sacred person and government, and imploring his majesty, that he would suffer the universal prayers of his loyal people of Ireland to assist the representations and endeavours of his chief governor of that kingdom towards inducing the best of princes to return his most faithful subjects the bill transmitted to Great Britain for limiting the duration of parliaments; which the patriots carried by a majority of two voices, there being 90 for and 88 against the address. His majesty's answer to the address did not appear very gracious to the addressers. "His majesty has received the address of the House "of Commons on the subject of a bill some time transmitted "for limiting the duration of parliaments. The sentiments of "his faithful commons were already known to his majesty by "their passing the heads of that bill: nor can any solicitation "add weight to that ancient and constitutional way of signifying "their desires on the like occasions. His majesty will always "have the highest satisfaction in complying with the wishes of "his faithful commons: but no consideration can prevail with his majesty to swerve from that indispensable duty, which "the constitution prescribes to him of concurring in such pro"visions only, as on mature deliberation and advice of his "council appear to him at the time calculated to promote the "true interest and happiness of his people." From the spirit, which dictated this answer, and the further conduct of the British cabinet at this time, it appears, as if they had selected this particular juncture for a trial of strength between the English and the Irish interest. A bill for better securing the liberties of the subject was this session passed in the commons, and transmitted, but was not returned. Another bill of a patriotic tendency was introduced this session, to prevent the buying and selling of offices, which concern the administration of justice, or the collection of his majesty's revenue: but it miscarried in the commons. Thus failed every effort of the patriots to remedy the system of venality, which now openly prevailed, and to bring back the constitution to its primitive principles of freedom and independence.*

As this was the time and this the system, to which Mr. Burke alluded in his incomparable political chef d'œuvre, on the Cause of the present Discon tents, I will favour the reader with some of his thoughts peculiarly applicable to this juncture. P. 56. "The court party resolve the whole into faction. Having said something before upon this subject, I shall only observe here, that when they give this account of the prevalence of faction, they present no very favourable aspect of the confidence of the people in their own governa ment. They may be assured, that however they amuse themselves with a variety of prospects for substituting something else in the place of that great and only foundation of government, the confidence of the people, every attempt will but make their condition worse, When men imagine, that their

VOL. II.

In the year 1765 the revenue of Ireland, although considerably increased upon the whole receipt, still fell so far short of the expences of government, that 100,000l. were directed to be raised at 4 per cent. and the principal due upon the different loans was ordered to be consolidated into one sum, making in the whole 595,000l. at five per cent. wich remained due at Lady Day. The debt of the nation then amounted to 508,8741. 5s. 9 d. There was this year a great scarcity of grain, as likewise a general failure of potatoes, which was still more severely felt by the lower ranks. The legislature found it necessary to interpose: they passed an act to stop the distilleries for a certain time, which consequently produced a decrease in the Excise, and also an act to prevent the exportation of corn; in both of which acts it is recited, that it was apprehended, there was not sufficient corn in the kingdom for the food of the inhabitants. until the harvest. In the latter of these acts is contained a proviso, that it should be lawful for his majesty, his heirs, and successors, by his or their order in the privy council of Great Britain, or for the chief governor or governors and privy council of Ireland for the time being, by their proclamation, to permit the exportation of any of the kinds of corn, grain, meal or flour therein mentioned, any thing therein contained to the contrary notwithstanding. The heads of the bill had been transmitted over without any dispensing power to the king in the British council: this was an alteration introduced by the British cabinet, and was violently, though ineffectually opposed by the few refood is only a cover for poison, and when they neither love nor trust the hand that serves it, it is not the name of the roast beef in Old England, that will persuade them to sit down to the table, that is spread for them. When the people conceive, that laws, and tribunals, and even popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends of their institution, they find in those names of dege nerated establishments only new motives to discontent. Those bodies, which when full of life and beauty, lay in their arms, and were their joy and comfort, when dead and putrid, become but the more loathsome from remembrance of former endearnients. A sullen gloom, and furious disorder, prevail by fits; the nation loses its relish for peace and prosperity, as it did in that season of fulness, which opened our troubles in the time of Charles the First. A specics of men, to whom a state of order would become a sentence of obscurity, are nourished into a dangerous magnitude by the heat of intestine disturbances; and it is no wonder that, by a sort of sinister piety, they cherish, in their turn, the disorders, which are the parents of all their consequence. Superficial observers consider such persons as the cause of the public uneasiness, when, in truth, they are nothing more than the effect of it. Good men look upon this distracted scene with sorrow and indignation. Their hands are tied behind them. They are despoiled of all the power, which might enable them to recon cile the strength of government with the rights of the people. They stand in a most distressing alternative. But in the election among evils they hope better things from temporary confusion, than from established servitude. In the mean time, the voice of law is not to be heard. Fierce licentiousness begets violent restraints. The military arm is the sole reliance; and then call your constitution what you please, it is the sword that governs. The civil power, like every other, that calls in the aid of an ally stronger than itself,

maining patriots in the Irish House of Commons. The two grounds, upon which the now dwindled patriotic party in the Irish House of Commons resisted these alterations were undoubtedly constitutional: 1°. That even under the restrictions. of Poyning's Law (which though perhaps prudent when passed, considering the then preponderancy of the Irish oligarchy had been latterly execrated by all Irish patriots), the king only had a power of assent or dissent: not a power of alteration, which from its nature must import a deliberative power, which could exist no where, but in the Lords and Commons of Ireland. 2°. That if it be expedient or necessary to lodge a dispensing power in the executive for the occasional benefit of the kingdom, such power to be executed by proclamation with the advice of the privy council in Great Britain, where the king personally resides, the proclamation issues directly from the king, with the advice of his privy council of Great Britain: but in Ireland, where the executive power is vested in such substitute or deputy as the king appoints, it issues in the name of such appointee, with, the advice of the privy council of Ireland. The practice is evidently bottomed in reason: otherwise the council of Great Britain would have a control over the legislative acts of the independent kingdom of Ireland. The patriots attributed the precipitancy, with which the court party pressed this bill through the Houses, to the most unworthy motives of driving the people to the desperate alternative of famine, or the subversion of their constitution.

On the 22d day of December, 1765, Dr. Lucas, as one of . the representatives of the city of Dublin, published an address to the lord mayor and aldermen, sheriffs, commons, citizens and freeholders of Dublin, on the passing of this bill, in which he perishes by the assistance it receives. But the contrivers of this scheme of government will not trust solely to the military power, because they are cunning men. Their restless and crooked spirit drives them to rake in the dirt of every kind of expedient. Unable to rule the multitude, they endeavour to raise divisions amongst them. One mob is hired to destroy another; a procedure which at once encourages the boldness of the populace, and justly increases their discontent. Men become pensioners of state on account of their abilities in the array of riot, and the discipline of confusion. Government is put under the disgraceful necessity of protecting from the severity of the laws that very licentiousness, which the laws had been before violated to repress. Every thing partakes of the original disorder. Anarchy predomi nates without freedom, and servitude without submission or subordination. These are the consequences inevitable to our public peace, from the scheme of rendering the executory government at once odious and feeble; of freeing administration from the constitutional and salutary control of parliament, and inventing for it a new control, unknown to the constitution, an interior cabinet; which brings the whole body of governn.ent into confusion and contempt."

* Vid. 8 Com. Journ. p. 70. The Journals very unfairly have suppressed the nature of the alteration made in England. They merely state that a committee was appointed to examine the transmiss with the heads of the bill sent from that House, and that it afterwards passed without amendment.

gave the following succinct history of its progress. "On Thursday (viz. 19) this bill was first presented to the House and read. As soon as the fatal alteration was discovered, it filled one part of the House with horror and detestation of the measure, and a motion was made to reject it. But, it passed in the negative; and it was ordered, and accordingly did receive a second reading on Friday last. It was then ordered to be committed on Saturday, passed the committee, was reported the same day, and ordered to be ingrossed, though in every step of its progress, in which there were not one third of the members in the House, it met with constant, uniform, though fruitless opposition, with many divisions of the House and the committee, in all which, I gave my utmost opposition to the measure, but had the misfortune to be always of the minority. I could not suspect, a bill with any, specially with such an alteration, could be permitted to make so rapid progress, through any part of the le gislature. Its fate now depends upon a single question in the House of Commons: when it will be put, or how determined, I cannot inform you; but the presumption is, it will be to-morrow."

In fact the question for the bill's passing with the inserted alteration was put on the next day, viz. Monday the 23d of December, 1765, and was carried by a majority of twenty-nine against fifteen.*

* 8 Com. Journ. p, 71. One of the most strenuous supporters of this bill with the alterations, was the late Lord Clare, then Mr. J. Fitzgibbon, member for Newcastle; to whom the following passage in Mr. Lucas's address referred. "Since I have mentioned precedents, you may see by the votes, that lawyers "have not let a worm-eaten parliament roll, nor an obsolete musty statute, 66 escape the most diligent research. If one happier than the rest should "think he found a case in point, in times, indeed, the most fit for the black "purpose, under the auspices of the direst foe to the liberties of Europe and "of Britain, the Spanish tyrant Philip, the worthy consort of bloody Queen "Mary, that horrid firebrand to the religion and the laws of her country; for it is in such a tyrannic reign alone, that any one could hope a precedent for "the purpose of this innovation might be found; what use could be made of "such a precedent in our happy days? It is indeed true, that an act passed in "this kingdom, in the third and fourth years of that abominable reign, for reducing certain waste lands to shire grounds; giving however, a power to "the crown, for seven years, to suspend or repeal the whole act or any part "thereof. Thus far the act proves a case in point: but upon reading the "whole section through, it appears that the ends, for which alone it could be "cited and read, were utterly frustrated: because, however evil and unjust "the power granted in that statute may appear, it was not, as some favourers of this innovation may contend, to make it serve as a precedent; it was not "left to a private order, conceived in the council of Great Britain, but it was "expressly provided, "that every suspension, repeal or revocation of the "statute should be made in writing under the great seal of Ireland, and pub. lic proclamation thereof made." If those who raked through much obscu"rity, and rubbish, and filth, thus serve their country, had found a better pre"cedent, no doubt their commendable zeal would have produced it. But you see how little this question can answer the purposes of such favourers

From the frequent defections of the patriots and the consequent reduction of their numbers, it became the policy of the castle, at this time, to throw all possible disrepute upon the few, who still earnestly espoused that cause. Upon this subject Dr. Lucas explained himself very pointedly in another address to his constituents:* but it would be uncandid to leave the reader in the vulgar prepossession, that because this eminent and true. patriot stood firm to the last hour of his life in the honourable cause of his suffering country, therefore he was unacceptable either to his sovereign or his vicegerents. The Earl of Hertford had particularly noticed Dr. Lucas when he was in England, and was esteemed by him in return: he boasted also of his kind treatment from the Lords Chesterfield and Harrington, Halifax and Northumberland. He bore affection as well as loyalty to his majesty. The unremitted and faithful attention to his parlia" of innovation as may produce it. In the innovation in these heads of a bill, "an order conceived in the council in England, which from its known appella"tion must be secret, is to repeal a statute passed in the parliament of Ire"land, without any proclamation or publication in Ireland, or perhaps without “its being at all known in the kingdom, till it comes to be executed in the "ports. Yet this is attempted to be introduced, after the enlivening spirit of "the revolution, and the consequent Hanover succession, broke the illicit "bonds of the never-enough-to-be-detested race of Stuarts, and bade us all live "and be free."

Patriot and patriotism, are now no longer considered as real, but ideal characters. That they were once otherwise, our author thus confesses. I hope, he is taught by his own heart to believe, that there are yet some men in the world, who are ready and willing to sacrifice, upon a proper occasion, their time, their fortunes, their healths, their lives, to the service of their country.

That designing men have often layed hold of trifling, as well as weighty occasions, to set forth their own importance, to gain their private ends; and that great and important subjects taken up apparently, with just and public-spirited views, have been given up and forsaken, when the ministry have thrown out the proper lure, are notorious, as they are hateful.

That the royal consent was once anti-constitutionally, yet without opposition, inserted in an act of parliament, and that at another time, the proposition was constitutionally spurned at, and rejected in the same parliament, is certainly true. That many patriots arose upon this great occasion, while the funds were redundant in the treasury, is true. But that these were short lived pageants is true. That some lost their places, some their pensions, for a while is certain; but that the chapping and changing, placing and pensioning, and replacing and repensioning these patriots, cost the nation about half a million, is certain: As it is, that while they justly contended for the right of parliament to the disposal of the redundance of the funds in the treasury, they afterwards peaceably suffered it to be drawn out of the treasury by the sole mandate of the crown. And thus, it must be confessed, that ours, like other patriots, have been the pageants of a day, each acting their parts like the poor player, who frets and struts his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.

You know I am no flatterer: you know how often and in what terms I have testified my disinterested love and loyalty to his majesty, and my zealous and inviolable attachment to his royal house. That I have always looked upon him, as not only politically, but actually free from blemish or imperfection; that I know his heart overflows with pure love and benevolence to all his subjects, and that I have myself sensibly shared of his royal clemency, in rescuing me from the oppressive hands of that detestable hoary tyrant, a long parlia