tion-bounden by every tie of duty to yourselves, your country, and your posterity, to preserve it, join all hands and hearts together, bring the vessel into port, forget all family differences, all local or partial iealousies, and save Ireland, save your country. Tell the bold minister who wants to take away your constitution, that he shall not have it, that you will not be his dupe; that you love Britain as a brother, but you will be his brother, not his dependent; and that you will not degrade yourselves from an independent kingdom into an abject colony.

To any of you who have doubts on the measure, I would say,

these very doubts call on you to vote against it. Do not hazard a change where you have a doubt-a change from which there is no return accept it, you have it for better for worse-you never can untie the knot: no appeal, no parliament left, to hear, to argue, or to speak for you; and if the step you take should prove wrong, if it should unfortunately end in the nation's calling again for her old constitution, and the politics of the British cabinet should be so desperate as not to listen to that call, think of the dreadful consequences, of which you may be the cause, if fatally the shock of arms should follow. Even to you, whose conviction is clear, I would say, if the majority of your countrymen think differently from you, if even a respectable part of them only think so, do not rest so confidently on your own judgments as to risk a measure which you cannot undo; remember then, if the direful necessity should ever arrive to make it expedient, you may embrace it when you please, but, if once adopted, it is irrecoverable. Were I speaking in another assembly, and if in such assembly any member sat returned for a borough, where the wishes of the electors followed the voice of some one individual, by which he came to have an habitual superiority, and of course a strong interest in its preservation (I do not say such a case exists here, though it might not be unparliamentary to suppose it), I would tell him, he is a trustee-and, without positive and direct desire, he should not do an act which is to annihilate the interest he is intrusted with. No, no-let all join in cherishing the parliament-it is a good one, and has done its duty; it has proved itself competent to every purpose of legislation, to procure peace, and to put down rebellion. Refuse the measure, but refuse it with calmness and dignity. Let not the offer of it lessen your attachment or weaken your affection to Britain; and prove that you are, and wish to be (as the Duke of Portland told you that you were), 'indissolubly connected with Great Britain, one in unity of constitution and unity of interest.' But, above all, revere and steadily preserve that constitution which was confirmed to you under his administration in 1782, and which has given you wealth, trade, prosperity, freedom, and independence."

On the address being read in the British Commons, on the 22nd of January, Mr. Sheridan thus met the question:-"He said, that he conceived it incumbent upon ministers, before they proposed the discussion of a plan of union, to offer some explanations with regard to the failure of the last solemn adjustment between the countries, which

had been generally deemed final. There was the stronger reason to expect this mode of proceeding, when the declaration of the Irish parliament in 1782 was recollected. The British legislature having acquiesced in this declaration, no other basis of connection ought to be adopted. The people of Ireland, who cherished the pleasing remembrance of that period when independence came upon them as it were by surprise, when the genius of freedom rested upon their island, would come to this second adjustment with a temper which would 'augur not tranquillity but disquietude, not prosperity but calamity, not the suppression of treason, but the extension and increase of plots to multiply and ensanguine its horrors.'

"It might be deemed informal, he hoped it was not improper, to enter into the discussion on an address of thanks. There were topics on which silence would be unworthy of the majesty of truth, and his country had claims upon him which he was not more proud to acknowledge than ready to liquidate to the full measure of his ability.

"There was a time when it would have been intimated to him, that to agitate in that house any question relative to the affairs of Ireland would be an encroachment on the rights of the parliament of that country; and that such an insult to the dignity of that body, and to its competence of legislation, would inflame that quick spirit of independence which the sister kingdom knew how to express, and had ever appeared both able and ready to infuse into a system of ardent, intrepid opposition to every act of ulterior domination. But now that the question involved the independence and very existence of the Irish parliament, he did not suppose that any speaker would have recourse to such an argument. In discussing the intricate and delicate interests which the king's message embraced, he could see the possible danger of increasing the discontent of the people of Ireland; but danger was to be apprehended from a violation of the rights and the independence of Ireland. Whatever might be the consequences of the present scheme, he was disposed to give credit to ministers for purity of intention. He could not suspect that they would propose a measure which they believed would ultimately cause a separation of Ireland from this country. He feared the agitation of the question might rather encourage than deter our foes, and that the distraction which it might produce would aid their purpose.

"To render an incorporate union in any respect a desirable measure, the sense of the nation ought to be freely manifested in favour of it; but there was no prospect of obtaining such a concurrence; and a union carried by surprise, by intrigue, by fraud, corruption, or intimidation, would leave both countries, with regard to permanency of connection, in a situation worse than the present: nor ought the union to be obtained by following the advice of a pamphleteer (Mr. Cook), who hinted that we should recollect the game played off by the volunteers of Ireland to take advantage of Great Britain, and play the same game against tnem. Let them never have to say to the English, you offered us your assistance against domestic and foreign enemies; we accepted it, and in return gave you affection and gratitude, and the irreproachable

pledge of all the support in our power. You then took advantage with your forty thousand soldiers; you constrained us to submit to a union, you would not wait for our consent. Some were afraid of being suspected of disloyalty, if they should come forward; others were banished; all were sensible that it was in your power, by acts of negative intimidation (the expression would be understood by those who talked of negative success), by refusing to send more men, or to relieve our pecuniary difficulties, to force a union.' If by such acts they deprived Ireland of the power of resisting any claims made upon her, if thus they wrung from her her independence, if thus they intimidated and corrupted her parliament to surrender the people to a foreign jurisdiction, he would not justify the Irish in a future insurrection, but he would say, that the alleged grounds for it would wear a very different complexion from the late.

"That the proposition itself should be entertained in Ireland, must be considered as an extraordinary case. To the period of the last solemn adjustment, the great impolicy and heinous injustice of the British government towards Ireland for three hundred years is notorious and avowed. Is it then reasonable to suppose, that a country, the object of such insult for three centuries, when at last she had wrung from our tardy justice that independence which she had a right to claim, and had obtained commercial advantages, should, only sixteen years afterwards, so far forget all prejudices, as to surrender the means by which she acquired those advantages? Would this be the case, if the free sense of the country were manifested? But it is possible that, during those sixteen years, the parliament may have forfeited the confidence of the country. Do the Irish plead guilty to this charge? On the contrary, did not his Majesty congratulate Ireland, that by the vigour of her parliament she had acquired an increase of prosperity? And that by the vigilance of the Irish parliament the late conspiracy was detected and brought to light; and when new disturbances are dreaded, was it to be dismissed? Was the detection of plots likely to be better effected by the English parliament ?

"Would it be maintained that the measure of a union would not wholly dissolve the legislature of Ireland; that independence would survive union, though in a modified state; and that the parliament would be left to judge of the local affairs of Ireland? Really this seems almost too much for men's feelings. A parliament! A sort of national vestry of Ireland, sitting in a kind of mock legislative capacity, after being ignobly degraded from the rank of representatives of an independent people, and deprived of the greatest authority that any parliament could possess! Could such a state be called a state of independence? And could we suppose that the Irish would agree to such a union under any other circumstances than those of force?

"Was the parliament of England competent or qualified to legislate for the parliament of Ireland? Impossible! Every advantage of situation favoured the one-the other was unfitted for governing, or giving law, by every disadvantage of situation and every dissimilarity of temper and habit. Lord Chancellor Clare said, that the English