stitution, even as we have mangled it, are many, adequate to the redress of all grievances by measures lenient and legal. You are the great creative radical part of the constitution; the source of the nation's vigour, and the seat of her soul: King, Lords, and Commons stand upon your base: you form, and may reform, Parliament. A list of measures, a general qualification, an elective creed to be tendered to every candidate, would extort national conditions from corruption itself. But, unless the nation shall be previously concerted and covenanted, she will be surprised by a dissolution, and a generat election will be a radical defeat.

Let the power of binding Ireland by the British Parliament be utterly and for ever abolished and abjured, that there may be no seed of jealousy between the two nations, on whose heart-felt coalition their mutual happiness depends, that offcious men may not traduce one country to the other, and that a future minister may not proceed, as in the instance of America, on the reserved principle of supremacy, and, unable to govern either country, embroil both. Let the power of the crown to alter, and of the Irish council to alter and suppress our bills, a power useless to His Majesty, opprobrious to his subjects, and founded on misconstruction of law, be relinquished; let the mutiny bill be here, as in England, dependent on Parliament, let the judges be here, as in England, independent of the Crown, that the mouth of the law may not be the will of power, nor the sword her instru

ment.

These are the principal constitutional amendments. But should the British minister trample down America, and become haughty to Ireland; if instead of new, necessary, and humble acquisition, a blow is meditated, let me conjure you, in order to keep what you have gotten already, to preserve your armed associations. I will conclude by appealing to them.

The Irish constitution, commerce, and pride, with you be gan, and with you they would vanish. Until Britain is reconciled to our participation of trade, while the British Parliament claims a right to take that trade away and make law for Ireland, - you are the great charter of the Irish nation, our efficient cause, and final hope. Prompted by you, we have conceived a vast image of our own greatness, prompted by you, we have spoken definitively to Great Bri tain, and, astonishing her pride and awakening her justice, have stated in one sentence the provocation of a century. Obnoxious for that virtue, you are to confirm your advocates, the objects of hatred and estimation, and to preserve your as sociations, the dreaded instrument of national deliverance.

Believe me, you have many enemies: you are to guard against false friends and natural foes; against the weakness of human nature and the depravity of man; against sloth; against security; against administration; against a militia. What! are we to go back to the days of confusion and power;

when the kingdom was lawless, and the trooper was the magistrate, and no act was executed but acts of the British Parliament! I have heard your legality disputed. Conscious as I am that no law prohibits the subject to arm, convinced as I am of your legality, I conceive that question to be lost in the immensity of your numbers. And with the pomp, and power, and trade, and all that train which await your progress, I shall not stop your army to ask, What law has niade you? Sufficient that there is no law against you; sufficient that without you there would be neither law nor liberty. Go on and prosper, thou sword of justice and shield of freedom! the living source of an ancient flame, the foundation of our pride, a providential interposition, an army enriching the land with industry, costing the state nothing, adequate to all her enemies, and greater than all her revenues could pay,→ awful indeed to the tyrant, but to a just prince unconquerable strength. The custody of the nation's character is in your hands. Go on, and multiply, and add immortal security to the CAUSE OF YOUR COUNTRY!

3

LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF DUBLIN.

I

TO MY FELLOW CITIZENS OF DUBLIN.

THANK YOU for past favours; I have found in you a kind and a gracious master; you have found in me an unprofitable servant: under that impression, 1 beg to assure you, that so long as the present state of representation in the Commons House continues, so long mnst I respectfully decline the honour of soliciting, at your hands, a seat in that assembly.

On this principle it was I withdrew from Parliament, together with those with whom I act; and I now exercise my privilege, and discharge my duty in communicating with my constituents, at the eve of a general election, some say an immediate dissolution, when I am to render back a trust, which, until parliament shall be reformed, I do not aspire to re-assume. The account of the most material parts of my conduct, together with the reason of my resolution, will be the subject of this letter.

When I speak of my conduct, I mean that adopted in common and in concert with the other gentlemen. We should have felt ourselves deficient in duty if we had not made one effort before the close of the parliament, for the restoration of domestic peace, by the only means by which it seemed attainable, conciliation; and if we had not submitted our opinions, however fallible, and our anxieties, however insignificant, on a subject which in its existence shook your state, and in its consequences must shake the empire. Our opinion was, that the origin of the evil, the source of the discontent, and the parent of the disturbance, was to be traced to an illstarred and destructive endeavour, on the part of the minister of the crown, to give to the monarch a power which the constitution never intended to render the king in parliament every thing, and the people nothing, and to work the people completely out of the House of Commons, and in their place to seat and establish the chief magistrate absolute and irresistible; it appeared to us that a ministry, guilty of such a crime, is as much a traitor to the constitution as the people

would be to the king if they should advance in arms, and place their leader on the throne; more guilty of treason in equity and justice; because in them it would be only rebellion against their creature, the king: but in the other it would be rebellion against his creator, the people: it occurred to us, that in this country the offence would be still higher, because in this country, it would be the introduction not only of a despotic, but of a foreign yoke, and the revival of that great question, which, in 1782, agitated this country, and which, till your parliament shall be reformed, must agitate this country for ever. We thought no Irishman; we were sure no honest Irishman would ever be in heart with government, so long as the parliament of this country shall be influenced by the cabinet of England, and were convinced that the people would not be the more reconciled to a foreign yoke, because reimposed by the help of their own countrymen; as long as they think this to be the case, we were convinced they will hate the administration, and the administration will hate them; on this principle we recollected the parliament of this country pledged their lives and fortunes in 1782, though some seem to have thought better of it since, and are ready to pledge their lives and fortunes against this principle. We could not seriously believe, that the people of Ireland were ready to resist the legislative usurpation of the British parliament, in whose station the greatness of the tyrant would have qualified the condition of the slave; and that the same people were now ready to prostrate themselves to the legislative usurpation of another body, a British cabinet; a humiliated and a tame tyrant. We recollected to have heard, that the friends of ministry had lamented that England had not acceded to the American claim of exclusive legislature, and afterward attempted to re-establish British dominion, by influencing the American assembly. We saw the ministry pursue that very plan toward Ireland which they regretted they had not resorted to in the case of America. We need not repeat the particulars; but we saw the result to be on the mind of the people a deep rooted and established discontent and jealousy, and we conceived that whatever conspiracies existed in any extent or degree, proceeded from that original and parent conspiracy in the minister to subvert the parliamentary constitution by the influence of the crown. It appeared to us, that the discontent and disturbance so created, was greatly encreased by another cause, the treatment of his Majesties Catholic subjects.

It is the business of the minister to observe the changes in the national spirit, as much as the changes of foreign com

binations; it was the misfortune of our ministry that they never attended to those changes; they did not perceive that the religious principle and temper, as well as the political, had undergone on the continent, in America, and in Ireland, a fundamental alteration; that the example of America had had prodigious effect on Europe; the example and doctrine of Europe had had no effect on America; they did not see that in consequence of that cause (there were other causes also) the Irish Catholic of 1792 did not bear the smallest resemblance to the Irish Catholic of 1692; that the influence of Pope, Priest, and Pretender, were at an end. Other dangers, and other influences might have arisen; new objects and new passions; the mind of the people is never stationary; the mind of courts is often stagnant; but those new dangers were to be provided against in a manner very different from the provisions made against the old. Indeed, the continuation of the old system of safety approximated and secured the new danger; unfortunately our ministers did not think so; they thought, they said, that the Irish Catholic, notwithstanding the American Revolution, notwithstanding the French Revolution, religious as well as political, was still the bigot of the last century; that, with respect to him, the age had stood still; that he was not impressed with the new spirit of liberty, but still moped under the old spirit of bigotry, and ruminated on the triumph of the cross, the power of Catholic hierarchy, the riches of the Catholic clergy, and the splendor of the Catholic church. You will find the speeches of the Catholic opponents, particularly the ministerial declaimers, dream on in this manner; and you will find, from the publications of those speeches, and of the Catholics, that the latter had laid aside their pre judices, but that the ministers had not. And one of the causes why those ministers alleged that Catholic mind had not advanced was, that their own mind had stood still; the state was the bigot, and the people the philosopher. The progress of the human mind, in the course of the last twentyfive years, has been prodigious in Ireland. I remember when there scarcely appeared a publication in a newspaper of any degree of merit which was not traced to some person of note, on the part of government or the opposition; but now a multitude of very powerful publications appear from authors entirely unknown, of profound and spirited investigation. There was a time when all learning in Europe was confined to the clergy; it then advanced among the higher orders of the laity, and now it has gone among the people. And, when once the powers of intellect are possessed by the great body of the nation, it is madness to hope to impose on that nation