surrender had not been previously and clandestinely covenanted; it was not a determined minister, but a willing Parliament.

I have heard that the bill, though perpetual, is a` benefit, because it carries the principle, viz. that the King, Lords, and Commons, are the only body competent to make law for Ireland. Parliament might have declared that principle; but this bill does not declare it by express words or necessary construction, or concomitant circumstances. The principle to the extent of this kingdom was carried before, and being once established here, carried itself in Great Britain, unless we gave the Crown a power of shaking this principle by arms: the bill coming back under the seal of Great Britain, had the assent of the Crown to whatever proposition it contained. If the House of Commons had sought an argument in support of liberty, they should have passed the express declaration of rights; if they looked to solid strength, they should have kept the army dependent upon themselves, they should have acted upon a principle that could be reconciled to theory or practice; they should not, upon any ground either of argumentative or actual security, have declined a declaration of right, and afterward surrender the dominion of the sword; adopting a line of conduct far below firmness, and above caution; arming without fear, by a perpetual mutiny bill, that very power which they had trembled to provoke by an assertion of their liberty.

The objection preferred against a declaration of right was, that a nation's liberty could not be determined by the words of the House of Commons, but the powers of the country; had the declaration weakened her power, though it asserted her liberty, the passing it had been inexpedient, and therefore a perpetual mutiny bill, not asserting in any terms the right, and in the most full and effectual terms diminishing the power, of the country, was upon no principle to be justified, neither by the arguments of those who supported a declaration of right, nor of the men who opposed it. That we have gotten free from all the laws of the British Parliament by the mutiny bill, I deny; for the post-office remains. That we have gotten free from the insult, I deny; for Ireland is named in the new British act.* That we have gotten free from the exercise of the British mutiny bill by our own, I deny; for the British act has expired in our determination to disobey it.

* When this was written, it had been determined by the British ministry in the present English mutiny bill, to name Ireland; which determination, upon reconsideration since the publication of this pamphlet, after a debate in council, was altered.

Our situation, vigour, and spirit, was such, at that particular time, that nothing could have injured us, but our own laws, nor have disgraced us, but our own Parliament. Nor let the nation deceive itself so much as to think that the British minister, who has sent us a perpetual bill, admits the liberty of Ireland. No! he is an enemy to your liberty: he thinks, that the British Parliament by its laws, the King by his prerogative, that each and both, can make articles of war for this country; and, therefore, he has made the bill perpetual, that the Irish Parliament may never again attempt to exercise what in his opinion better belongs to others, the power of regulating his Majesty's forces. It was impossible to prevent the just claims of the Irish nation: the minister who denied, could do no more than get rid of them for ever; and, accordingly, has annexed a clause of surrender to the very law in which those claims were advanced, saving his own pretensions and rebuking yours: he has striken the nation in the flight of her glory.

I have heard it urged in mitigation of the mischief of this law, that notwithstanding this law, His Majesty cannot keep up his army without the express consent of Parliament, given from session to session. I have said so; I think also, that His Majesty cannot charge his hereditary revenue with pensions. But I see, though these are points of law, they are not posts of strength the perpetual nature of the laws of which we speak and complain, those dangerous laws which give the King the purse, and that disgraceful law which gives him the sword, enables him to misapply both; to waste your treasure, and keep up your army without the control of Parliament. The latter law, the mutiny bill, I conceive, by this argument, not proved to be safe, but rendered cruel and absurd; for it is a statute at variance with the common law, a statute making it capital at all times to desert the army, which is at no time legal without the consent of Parliament; and which may thus be kept together by force to be fed by rapine. And here I cannot but observe, that this argument did not occur before, but was invented for the occasion; and is a despicable apology and poor point of law to the observance of which we have annexed the penalty of death, giving up solid strength, and hanging on such perilous, speculative, and fantastic security, the vast and weighty charge of public liberty. France, Spain, kingdoms that have no liberty, I dare say, have similar points of law: but the ear of a military government will not listen to such things, they are the sad devices of an infamous cause, and the last gaspings of exhausted argument; they are only of weight when the people have reserved a solid strength

which makes such arguments unnecessary; they are fortresses to which no man would retire, but he who was determined to capitulate.

I have heard it said that the army is imperial in its nature, and therefore that no part of it should be left to the Irish Parliament for its regulation: but this proposition wants truth in its premise, and is false and absurd in its consequence. The army is not imperial, the constitution does not conceive an empire, neither is it founded upon maxims imperial or military. The law of England which establishes the army makes it parliamentary, not imperial; the law of Ireland which provides for the army, makes it an Irish, not an imperial army. The premise therefore is false, the conclusion is false and absurd; for if the premise were true, it would conclude, not for a perpetual, but against any Irish mutiny bill; for the English mutiny bill; for the supremacy of the British Parliament.

This argument, thus founded on an ignorance of the constitution in general, and of the establishment of the army in particular, and leading to the entire destruction of our liberty, has sought for strength in another argument equally feeble; viz. "That unity of discipline is necessary, and that therefore the army in every part of the dominions should be subject to one power." But this observation proceeds from an ignorance of the service, as the other was derived from an ignorance of the constitution. Unity of discipline is not necessary; it is not the case of armies in actual service; it is not the case of the army now in America; it was not the case of the allied army in the last war in Germany; neither is unity of command necessary to establish unity of discipline; neither does the perpetual mutiny bill establish unity of command. Moreover, if unity of discipline is necessary, we are not to suppose that the Irish Parliament will not secure it, by adopting the English military code; we are not to suppose our Parliament inadequate to the wholesome exercise of its authority over every branch of the establishment, military as well as civil; neither are we to conceive the Crown incapable of abusing, and the Parliament incapable of using an important article of legislative power; neither having trespassed upon the common law to admit an army, are we to commit further and indefinite depredations to establish unity of command, under the quaint pretence of securing unity of discipline. But the perpetual mutiny bill does neither. It does not establish unity of command; and it endangers unity and equality of discipline, by making the principal articles of war perpetual in Ireland, which are annual in Great Britain; by establishing an army here of a distinct nature, and military

powers in the Crown of a different extent and duration from what was ever attempted or would be endured in Great Britain. Imperial armies, imperial legislatures, imperial unities, are terms, in my mind, of very little meaning; they are the vanities of the British Court, harassing the connections of the British nation; unconscious of limit, subversive of liberty, and a stranger to the law; in their theory, they are insult, and in their application, war.

I have heard it suggested that the mischief of a perpetual mutiny bill exists in speculation only; but I cannot think so, no more than I could think that any political question, any constitutional injury, a total instead of a partial loss of liberty, was an evil in speculation only: a measure which changes the balance of the constitution to the side of power, and throws into the scale of the monarch the perpetual dead weight of the sword, is not a speculative evil, to any mind except to those to whom the blessing of a free constitution is a visionary good. But in political as in moral depravity, the slave, like the sinner, will not see his crime until he feels his punishment, and smarts under the lash either of the tyrant or the law. In this constitution every diminution of the power of the people is an actual evil; every increase of the power of the Crown is an actual evil. An injury in speculation is a measure neutral in itself, but dangerous in its tendency. The perpetual and unbounded grant of the power of the sword is not the evil tendency, but the actual evil;- that from this evil more will ensue, and that a military government will be used to establish an absolute one, is, I do acknowledge, a speculation, but by no means absurd, because the thing did happen. James II. in the last century did endeavour to make himself absolute, by assuming of his own authority that very power which we have now given the Sovereign a perpetual law to exercise: he kept together by martial law an army of 30,000, paid by his civil list: an English army, however ready they may be found to enforce the supremacy, were at that time reluctant to destroy the liberty of the British nation. To guard against a similar attempt, the declaration of right sets forth, that standing armies and martial law, in peace, without the consent of Parliament, are illegal;- meaning the consent of Parliament from time to time, of the then existing Parliament, who seeing the use which His Majesty makes of his army, may give their consent or withhold it. We are blessed if not benefited by experi

ence.

I know very well, that in political questions, arguments unanswerable, founded in the obvious nature of the question,

when by a certain set of politicians, they are not treated as factious, will be derided as visionary for men long lost in the service of a court, do not choose to consider the consequence or the spring of their own action; their conscience informs their capacity that sufficient for the day is the crime and corruption thereof. Such men, for a very vicious conduct, have an apparent retreat in a very bad understanding : but it has been by a different way of thinking, that liberty still exists in England, when in almost every other quarter of the globe she has perished, and that the British constitution survives in a world of slavery-owing I suppose to a perpetual vigilance, an English instinct, an unremitting jealousy, an apprehensive people, wherever a stab was given certain to gather about the wound, active on the frontier of privilege, and banking out oppression as the Hollander banks out the sea. Such formerly was the conduct of England, such ought to be now the conduct of Ireland; for of all nations she has most reason to be apprehensive about her liberty, because it is but this moment rescued; it is but just recovered from the supremacy of the British Parliament, and it was within a cast of being surrendered by the compliance of our own: a proposal was made not many years ago, to grant a money bill for an immense period, and rejected by the accident of one majority: the danger to Irish liberty therefore is not visionary: no, her escape is miraculous!

I have heard it said that the mutiny bill is safe, because the king will not make a direct attack upon the rights of his people; but there are other ways of invading liberty besides open and direct hostility; great powers given to the Crown, such as we have given, a perpetual and encreasing revenue, with a law to collect it of eventual perpetuity, accompanied with the perpetual and unbounded power of the sword, may in a course of time make the chief magistrate so very strong, that the subject will be afraid to oppose him in such a posture of strength and weakness a nation capitulates without a blow, all her strong posts are taken, revenue, army, purse, and sword. The question does not come to a trial; they who would not make a constitutional resistance to the first encroachment, will not be called upon to make a treacherous stand against the last act of power: their country will never know how little such men are to be depended upon: the king in such a case need not resort to arms; his solid strength operates without being put forth, and is an occult cause influencing and depressing the motions and spirit of parliament and people. The subject feels at a distance an accumulated weight of power coming against him, and by instinct retires.