seemed always in thought, and each thought provoked an attendant gesticulation How strange it is. that a mind so replete with grace, and symmetry, and power, and splendor, should have been allotted such a dwelling for its residence! Yet so it was and so, also, was it one of his highest attributes that his genius, by its excessive light,' blinded his hearers to his physical imperfections. It was the victory of inind over matter." "The chief difficulty in this great speaker's way was the first five minutes. During his exordium laughter was imminent. He bent his body almost to the ground, swung his arms over his head, up, and down, and around him, and added to the grotesqueness of his manner a hesitating tone and drawling emphasis. Still, there was an earnestness about him that at first besought, and, as he warmed, enforced, nay, commanded attention."

The speeches of Mr. Grattan afford unequivocal proof, not only of a powerful intellect, but of high and original genius. There was nothing commonplace in his thoughts, his images, or his sentiments. Every thing came fresh from his mind, with the vividness of a new creation. His most striking characteristic was, condensation and rapidity of thought. "Semper instans sibi," pressing continually upon himself, he never dwelt upon an idea, however important; he rarely presented it under more than one aspect; he hardly ever stopped to fill out the intermediate steps of his argument. His forte was reasoning, but it was "logic on fire ;" and he seemed ever to delight in flashing his ideas on the mind with a sudden, startling abruptness. Hence, a distinguished writer has spoken of his eloquence as a "com. bination of cloud, whirlwind, and flame”—a striking representation of the occasional obscurity and the rapid force and brilliancy of his style. But his incessant effort to be strong made him sometimes unnatural. He seems to be continually straining after effect. He wanted that calmness and self-possession which mark the highest order of minds, and show their consciousness of great strength. When he had mastered his subject, his subject mastered him. His great efforts have too much the air of harangues. They sound more like the battle speeches of Tacitus than the orations of Demosthenes.

His style was elaborated with great care. It abounds in metaphors, which are always striking, and often grand. It is full of antithesis and epigrammatic turns, which give it uncommon point and brilliancy, but have too often an appearance of labor and affectation. His language is select. His periods are easy and fluent-made up of short clauses, with but few or brief qualifications, all uniting in the expression of some one leading thought. His rhythmus is often uncommonly fine. In the peroration of his great speech of April 19th, 1780, we have one of the best specimens in our language of that admirable adaptation of the sound to the sense which distinguished the ancient orators.

Though Mr. Grattan is not a safe model in every respect, there are certain purposes for which his speeches may be studied with great advantage. Nothing can be better suited to break up a dull monotony of style-to give raciness and point— to teach a young speaker the value of that terse and expressive language which is, to the orator especially, the finest instrument of thought.

Вв

SPEECH

OF MR. GRATTAN IN THE IRISH HOUSE OF COMMONS IN MOVING A DECLARATIJN OF RIBB RIGHT, DELIVERED APRIL 19, 1780.

INTRODUCTION.

Ireland had been treated by the English, for three centuries, like a conquered nation. A Parliame had indeed been granted her, but a well-known statute, called Poynings' Act, had so abridged the rights of that Parliament, as to render it almost entirely dependent on the English Crown. By the provisions of this act, which was passed in 1494, through the agency of Sir Edward Poynings, then Lord Deputy of Ireland, no session of the Irish Parliament could be held without a license previously obtained from the King of England in council, on the recommendation of the Deputy and his council in Ireland. Thus, the English government had power to prevent the Irish Parliament from ever assembling, except for par poses which the King saw reason to approve. At a later period, there was indeed a relaxation of the severity of this act, but the restraints still imposed were borne reluctantly by the Irish, and gave rise at times to violent struggles. Under such an administration, the commercial and manufacturing interests of Ireland were wholly sacrificed to those of the English; the exportation of woolen goods, and of most other articles of English manufacture, and also the direct import of foreign articles, being denied the Irish. These restrictions had been removed in part, as already stated, on the ground of "expediency," by an act of the British Parliament, passed December 13, 1779, under the terror of the Irish Volunteers, and Mr. Grattan, with the same instrument of compulsion in his hands, now moved the Irish Parliament to a Declaration of Right, which should deny the authority of England to make laws for Ireland—an authority asserted by an act of the British Parliament, passed in the sixth year of George I

SPEECH, &c.

I have entreated an attendance on this day, that you might, in the most public manner, deny the claim of the British Parliament to make law for Ireland, and with one voice lift up your hands against it.

est moment

possible.

If I had lived when the ninth of William took Duty of resist away the woolen manufacture, or ing at the earli when the sixth of George the First took away your Constitution, I should have made a covenant with my own conscience, to seize the first reasonable moment of rescuing my country from the ignominy of such acts of power; or, if I had a son, I should have administered to him an oath that he would consider himself as a person separate and set apart for the discharge of so important a duty.

Upon the same principle am I now come to move a Declaration of Right, the first moment occurring in my time, in which such a declaration could be made with any chance of success, and without an aggravation of oppression.

cial conces

isfactory.

Sir, it must appear to every person that, notThe commer. withstanding the import of sugar, and sions not sat export of woolens,' the people of this country are not satisfied; something remains the greater work is behind-the public heart is not well at ease. To promulgate our satisfaction, to stop the throats of millions with the votes of Parliament, to preach homilies to the Volunteers, to utter invectives against the people under the pretense of affectionate advice, is an attempt, weak, suspicious and inflammatory.

You can not dictate to those whose sense you are instructed to represent.

Your ancestors, who sat within these walls lost to Ireland trade and liberty. You, by the assistance of the people, have recovered trade You owe the kingdom a CONSTITUTION; she calls upon you to restore it.

The ground of public discontent seems to be, "We have gotten commerce, but not freedom." The same power which took away the export of woolen and the export of glass, may take them away again. The repeal is partial, and the ground of repeal is a principle of expediency.

America

Sir, expedient is a word of appropriated and tyrannical import-expedient is a word Case of Ir selected to express the reservation of land and authority, while the exercise is mitigat- compared. ed-expedient is the ill-omened expression in the repeal of the American Stamp Act. England thought it "expedient" to repeal that law Happy had it been for mankind if, when she withdrew the exercise, she had not reserved the right. To that reservation she owes the loss of her American empire, at the expense of millions, and America the seeking of liberty through a scene of bloodshed. The repeal of the Wooler Act, similarly circumstanced, pointed against the principle of our liberty, may be a subject for il luminations to a populace, or a pretense for apes tacy to a courtier, but can not be a subject of settled satisfaction to a free born, an intelligen and an injured community.

It is, therefore, they [the people of Ireland consider the free trade as a trade de facto, no de jure-a license to trade under the Parliamen

Free trade not granted to Ire land as a right.

The situation of England enables the Irish to demand

of England, not a free trade under the charter of | Henry, with the charter of John, and with all Ireland—a tribute to her strength, to the passions of the people! "Our lives are a maintain which she must continue in your service; but our liberties we received a state of armed preparation, dread- them from God, we will not resign them tc ing the approach of a general peace, and attrib- man!" Speaking to you thus, if you repulse uting all she holds dear to the calamitous condi- these petitioners, you abdicate the office of Partion of the British interest in every quarter of liament, you forfeit the rights of the kingdom, the globe. This dissatisfaction, founded upon a you repudiate the instructions of your constitu consideration of the liberty we have lost, is in- ent, you belie the sense of your country, you creased when they consider the opportunity they palsy the enthusiasm of the people, and you reare losing; for, if this nation, after the death- ject that good which not a minister-not a wound given to her freedom, had fallen on her Lord North-not a Lord Buckinghamshire-not knees in anguish, and besought the Almighty to a Lord Hillsborough, but a certain providential frame an occasion in which a weak and injured conjuncture, or, rather, the hand of God, seems people might recover their rights, prayer could to extend to you. not have asked, nor God have formed, a moment more opportune for the restoration of liberty, than this in which I have the honor to address you. England now smarts under the lesson of the American war. The doctrine of imperial legislature she feels to be pernicious the revenues and monopolies annexed to it she found to be untenable. Her enemies are a host pouring upon her from all quarters of the earth-her armies are dispersed the sea is not her's-she has no minister, no ally, no admiral, none in whom she long confides, and no general whom she has not disgraced. The balance of her fate is in the hands of Ireland. You are not only her last connection you are the only nation in Europe that is not her enemy. Besides, there does, of late a certain damp and supineness overcast her arms and councils, miraculous as that vigor which has lately inspirited yours. With you every thing is the reverse. Never was there a Parliament in Ireland so possessed of the confidence of the people. You are now the greatest political assembly in the world. You are at the head of an immense army; nor do we only possess an unconquerable force, but a certain unquenchable fire, which has touched all ranks of men like a visitation. Turn to the growth and spring of your country, and behold and admire it!

eir rights.

Where do you find a nation who, upon whatSpirit of the ever concerns the rights of mankind, trab sation. expresses herself with more truth or force, erspicuity or justice-not in the set phrases of the scholiast; not the tame unreality of the courtier; not the vulgar raving of the rabble; but the genuine speech of liberty, and the ansophisticated oratory of a free nation. See her military ardor, expressed not in forty thousand men conducted by instinct, as they were raised by inspiration, but manifested in the zeal and promptitude of every young member of the growing community. Let corruption tremble! Let the enemy, foreign or domestic, tremble! but let the friends of liberty rejoice at these means of safety and this hour of redemption-an enlightened sense of public right, a young appetite for freedom, a solid strength, and a rapid fire, which not only put a Declaration of Right within your power, but put it out of your power to decline one! Eighteen counties are at your There they stand, with the compact of

bar.

I read Lord North's propositions, and I wish to be satisfied, but I am controlled by a paper (for I will not call it a law); it is the sixth of George First. [Here the clerk, at Mr. Grattan's request, read from the Act of the sixth of George I., " that the kingdom of Ireland hath been, is, and of right ought to be, subordinate to and dependent upon the Imperial Crown of Great Britain, as being inseparably united to and annexed thereunto; and that the King's Majesty, by and with the consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal, and the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the kingdom and the people of Ireland.]

I will ask the gentlemen of the long robe, is this the law? I ask them whether it is This act not the practice? I appeal to the judges enforced. of the land, whether they are not in a course of declaring that the Parliament of England nam ing Ireland, binds her? I appeal to the magis. trates of Ireland whether they do not, from time to time, execute certain acts of the British Parliament? I appeal to the, officers of the army, whether they do not confine and execute their fellow-subjects by virtue of the Mutiny Act of England? And I appeal to this House whether a country so circumstanced is free? Where is the freedom of trade? Where is the security of property? Where the liberty of the people? I here, in this Declaratory Act, see my country proclaimed a slave! I see every man in this House enrolled a bondsman! I see the judges of the realm, the oracles of the law, borne down by an unauthorized power! I see the magistrates prostrate; and I see Parliament witness to these infringements, and silent! I therefore say, with the voice of three millions of people, that, notwithstanding the import of sugar, and export of woolen and kerseys, beetle-wood and prunellas, nothing is safe, satisfactory, or honorable; nothing, except a Declaration of Right! What! Are you, with three millions The Decla:a of men at your back, with charters in tion therefors one hand and arms in the other, afraid to say, We are a free people? Are you the greatest House of Commons that ever sat in Ire. land, that want but this one act to equal that English House of Commons which passed the

demanded

There is no objection to this resolution excep fears. I have examined your fears; No ground of I pronounce them to be frivolous. If fear for com England is a tyrant, it is you have quence made her so. It is the slave that makes the ty rant, and then murmurs at the master whom he himself has constituted. I do allow, on the subject of commerce, England was jealous in the extreme; and I do say, it was commercial jealousy; it was the spirit of monopoly. The wool en trade and the Act of Navigation had made he tenacious of a comprehensive legislative authority, and, having now ceded that monopoly, there is nothing in the way of our liberty except our own corruption and pusillanimity. Nothing eat prevent your being free, except yourselves; it is not in the disposition of England, it is not in the interest of England, it is not in her force. What! can eight millions of Englishmen, opposed to twenty millions of French, seven millions of Spanish, to three millions of Americans, reject the alliance of three millions in Ireland? Can eight millions of British men, thus outnumbered by foes, take upon their shoulders the expense of an expedition to enslave Ireland? Will Great Britain, a wise and magnanimous country,

Petition a Right, or that other, which passed | consternation at the Custom-house, and, sps the Declaration—are you, are you afraid to telling the example which great men afforded, ten the British Parliament that you are a free peo- dered for entry prohibited manufactures, and ple? Are the cities and the instructing coun- sought, at his private risk, the liberty of his ties, who have breathed a spirit that would have country. With him, I am convinced, it is nee done honor to old Rome, when Rome did honor essary to agitate the question of right. In vain to mankind—are they to be free by connivance? will you endeavor to keep it back; the pase.ou Are the military associations those bodies is too natural, the sentiment too irresistible; the whose origin, progress, and deportment have question comes on of its own vitality. You transcended, equaled, at least, any thing in mod- must reinstate the laws. ern or ancient story, in the vast line of Northern array-are they to be free by connivance? What man will settle among you? Who will leave a land of liberty and a settled government for a kingdom controlled by the Parliament of another country; whose liberty is a thing by stealth; whose trade a thing by permission; whose judges deny her charters; whose Parliament leaves every thing at random; where the hope of freedom depends on the chance that the jury shall despise the judge stating a British act, or a rabble stop the magistrate in the execution of it, rescue your abdicated privileges by anarchy and confusion, and save the Constitution by trampling on the government? But I shall be told that these are groundless jealousies, and that the principal cities, and more than one half the counties of the people. the kingdom, are misguided men, raising those groundless jealousies. Sir, they may say so, and they may hope to dazzle with illuminations, and they may sicken with addresses, but the public imagination will never rest, nor will her heart be well at ease; never, so long as the Parliament of England claims or exercises legislation over this country. So long as this shall be the case that very free trade (oth-thus tutored by experience and wasted by war, erwise a perpetual attachment) will be the cause of new discontent. It will create a pride and wealth, to make you feel your indignities; it will furnish you with strength to bite your chain; the liberty withheld poisons the good communicated. The British minister mistakes the Irish character. Had he intended to make Ireland a slave, he should have kept her a beggar. There is no middle policy. Win her heart by a restoration of her right, or cut off the nation's right hand; greatly emancipate, or fundamentally destroy! We may talk plausibly to England; but so long as she exercises a power to bind this country, so long are the nations in a state of war. The claims of the one go against the liberty of the other, and the sentiments of the latter go to oppose those claims to the last drop of her blood.

Nothing less can satisfy

The English Opposition, therefore, are right; mere trade will not satisfy Ireland. They judge of us by other great nations; by the English nation whose whole political life has been a struggle for liberty. They judge of us with a true knowledge and just deference for our character, that a country enlightened as Ireland, armed as Ireland, and injured as Ireland, will be satisfied with nothing less than liberty. I admire that public-spirited merchant3 who spread

the French navy riding her channel, send an army to Ireland to levy no tax, to enforce no law, to answer no end whatever, except to spoliate the charters of Ireland, and enforce a barren oppression?

What! has England lost thirteen provinces? has she reconciled herself to this England w loss, and will she not be reconciled same thing to to the liberty of Ireland? Take no- Ame tice, that the very Constitution which I move you to declare, Great Britain herself offered to America: it is a very instructive proceeding in the British history. In 1778 a commission went out with powers to cede to the thirteen prosinces of America totally and radically the legis lative authority claimed over her by the British Parliament; and the commissioners, pursuant to their powers, did offer to all, or any of the American states, the total surrender of the legislative authority of the British Parliament. 1 will read you their letter to the Congress. [Here the letter was read, surrendering the power, as aforesaid]. What! has England of

the Irish Custom-house, which had been probibited by an English act of Parliament, for the purpose of trying the validity of the Act of the sixth of George

the First.

This is the commission referred to in such se vere terms by Mr. Burke in a speech delivered

Alderman Horan, who offered goods for entry at Bristol. See page 297

her rights and privileges. To say that Ire land is not to be satisfied with liberty, because she is not satisfied with slavery, is folly.

I laugh at that man who supposes that Ireland will not be content with a free trade and a free Constitution; and would any man advise her to be content with less?

fered this to the resistance of America, and will | my country from being free; no gratitude which she refuse this to the loyalty of Ireland? But, should oblige Ireland to be the slave of England hough you do not hazard disturbance by agree. In cases of robbery or usurpation, nothing is 21. ing to this resolution, you do most exceedingly object of gratitude, except the thing stolen, the hazard tranquility by rejecting it. Do not im- charter spoliated. A nation's liberty can not agine that the question will be over when this like her money, be rated and parceled out in motion shall be negatived. No! it will recur in gratitude. No man can be grateful or libera! a vast variety of shapes and diversity of places. of his conscience, nor woman of her honor, not Your constituents have instructed you, in great nation of her liberty. There are certain inim numbers, with a powerful uniformity of senti- partable, inherent, invaluable properties not tc ment, and in a style not the less awful because be alienated from the person, whether body pol full of respect. They will find resources in their itic or body natural. With the same contempt own virtue, if they have found none in yours. do I treat that charge which says that Ireland Public pride and conscious liberty, wounded by is insatiable; seeing that Ireland asks nothing repulse, will find ways and means of vindication. but that which Great Britain has robbed her of You are in that situation in which every man, every hour of the day, may shake the pillars of the state. Every court may swarm with questions of right, every quay and wharf with prohibited goods. What shall the judges, what the commissioners, do upon such occasion? Shall they comply with the laws of Ireland against the claims of England, and stand firm where you have trembled? Shall they, on the other hand, not comply; and shall they persist to act against the law? Will you punish them, will you proceed against them, for not showing a spirit superior to your own? On the other hand, will you not punish them? Will you leave your liberties to be trampled on by those men? Will you bring them and yourselves, all constituted orders, executive power, judicial power, parliamentary authority, into a state of odium, impotence, and contempt; transferring the task of defending public right into the hands of the populace, and leaving it to the judges to break the laws, and to the people to assert them? Such would be the consequence of false moderation, of irritating timidity, of inflammatory palliations, of the weak and corrupt hope of compromising with the court before you have emancipated the country.

Lesa import

I have answered the only semblance of a solid reason against the motion. I will now ant objection try to remove some lesser pretenses, ebriated. some minor impediments; for instance: first, that we have a resolution of the same kind already in our journals. But how often was the Great Charter confirmed? Not more frequently than your rights have been violated. Is one soltary resolution, declaratory of your rights, sufficient for a country, whose history, from the beginning unto the end, has been a course of violation?

The fact is, every new breach is a reason for a new repair; every new infringement should be a new declaration, lest charters should be overwhelmed by precedents, and a nation's rights lost in oblivion, and the people themselves lose the memory of their own freedom.

I shall hear of ingratitude, and name the argument to despise it. I know the men who use t are not grateful. They are insatiate; they are public extortioners, who would stop the tide of public prosperity, and turn it to the channel of their own wretched emolument. I know of no species of gratitude which should prevent

I shall be told that we hazard the modification of the law of Poynings, and the Judges Bill, and the Habeas Corpus Bill, and the Nullum Tempus Bill; but I ask, have you been for years begging for these little things, and have you not yet been able to obtain them? And have you been contending against a little body of eighty men, in Privy Council assembled, convocating themselves into the image of a Parliament, and ministering your high office; and have you been contending against one man, an humble individual, to you a leviathan-the English Attorney General, exercising Irish legislation in his own person, and making your parliamentary deliterations a blank, by altering your bills or suppress ing them; have you not been able to quell this little monster? Do you wish to know the reason? I will tell you; because you have not been a Parliament, nor your country a people. Do you wish to know the remedy? Be a Parliament, become a nation, and those things will follow in the train of your consequence.

I shall be told that tithes are shaken, being vested by force of English acts. But in answer to that, I observe, time may be a title, but an English Act of Parliament certainly can not. It is an authority which, if a judge would charge, no jury would find, and which all the electors of Ireland have already disclaimed-disclaimed unequivocally, cordially, and universally.

Sir, this is a good argument for an act of title, but no argument against a Declaration of Right. My friend, who sits above me, has a bill of confirmation. We do not come unprepared to Parliament. I am not come to shake property, but to confirm property, and to restore freedom. The nation begins to form-we are moldering into a people; freedom asserted, property secured, and the army, a mercenary band, likely to be de pendent on your Parliament, restrained by law.

A bill to be immediately introduced on passing the Declaration, by which all laws of the English Parliament affecting property were to be confirmed by the Irish Parliament.