principle of the Revolu or utility, or empire, or the laws of England, on the laws of Ireland, or the laws of nature, or the laws of God. Do not suffer that power, which banished your manufacturers, dishonored your peerage, and stopped the growth of your people Do not, I say, be bribed by an export of woolen or an import of sugar, and suffer that power, which has thus withered the land, to have exist. ence in your pusillanimity. Do not send the people to their own resolves for liberty, passing by the tribunals of justice, and the high court of Parliament; neither imagine that, by any forma tion of apology, you can palliate such a commission to your hearts, still less to your children, who will sting you in your grave for interposing between them and their Maker, and robbing them of an immense occasion, and losing an opportunity which you did not create and can nev er restore. and miraculous armament, shall the historian stop at liberty, and observe, that here the prin cipal men among us were found wanting, were awed by a weak ministry, bribed by an empty treasury; and when liberty was within their grasp, and her temple opened its folding doors, fell down, and were prostituted at the threshold? Never was such a revolution accomplished in so | this land, which has no foundation in necessity short a time, and with such public tranquillity. In what situation would those men, who call themselves friends of constitution and of government, have left you? They would have left you without a title (as they stole it) to your estates, withcut an assertion of your Constitution, or a law for your army; and this state of private and public insecurity, this anarchy, raging in the kingdom for eighteen months, these mock-moderators would have had the presumption to call peace. The King has no other title to his Crown than Appeal to the that which you have to your liberty. Both are founded, the throne and your tion of 1688. freedom, upon the right vested in the subject to resist by arms, notwithstanding their oaths of allegiance, any authority attempting to impose acts of power as laws; whether that authority be one man or a host, the second James or the British Parliament, every argument for the house of Hanover is equally an argument Hereafter, when these things shall be hisfor the liberties of Ireland. The Act of Settle-tory, your age of thraldom, your sud- Percration ment is an act of rebellion, or the sixth of George den resurrection, commercial redress, the First an act of usurpation. I do not refer to doubtful history, but to living record, to common charters, to the interpretation England has put on those charters (an interpretation made, not by words only, but crowned by arms), to the revolution she has formed upon them, to the King she has established, and, above all, to the oath of allegiance solemnly plighted to the house of I might, as a constituent, come to your bar Stuart, and afterward set aside in the instance and demand my liberty. I do call upon you by of a grave and moral people, absolved by virtue the laws of the land, and their violation; by the of those very charters; and as any thing less instructions of eighteen counties; by the arms, than liberty is inadequate to Ireland, so is it dan-inspiration, and providence of the present mogerous to Great Britain. We are too near the British nation; we are too conversant with her history; we are too much fired by her example to be any thing less than equals; any thing less, we should be her bitterest enemies. An enemy to that power which smote us with her mace, and to that Constitution from whose blessings we were excluded, to be ground, as we have been, by the British nation, bound by her Parliament, plundered by her Crown, threatened by her enemies, and insulted with her protection, while we returned thanks for her condescension, is a system of meanness and misery which has expired in our determination and in her magnanimity. That there are precedents against us, I allow; acts of power I would call them, not not of bind precedents; and I answer the English pleading such precedents, as they answered their Kings when they urged precedents against the liberty of England. Such things are the tyranny of one side, the weakness of the other, and the law of neither. We will not be bound by them; or rather, in the words of the Decla- 7 Referring to the rapid formation of the volan ration of Right, no doing, judgment, or proceed-teer corps. The reader will be interested to observe the Precedents ing force. ment-tell us the rule by which we shall go ing to the contrary shall be brought into prece-rhythmus of the last three paragraphs; so slow and dent or example. Do not, then, tolerate a pow-dignified in its movement; so weighty as it falls on er, the power of the British government, over the ear; so perfectly adapted to the sentiments ex This was an act of the British Parliament set-pressed in this magnificent passage. The effect tling the line of succession to the British Crown on the descendants of the Princess Sophia of Hanover, to the exclusion of the Stuarts. will be heightened by comparing it with the rapsal and iambic movement of the passage containing Mr Erskine's description of the Indian chief, page fil Mr. Grattan then moved the Declaration of | mons, and he was voted down. He renewed Right; but the power of the English govern- the motion two years after, in connection with ment was too great in the Irish House of Com- the speech which follows. SPEECH OF MR GRATTAN IN THE IRISH HOUSE OF COMMONS ON MAKING HIS SECOND MOTION FOR ▲ DECLARATION OF IRISH RIGHT, DELIVERED APRIL 16, 1782. INTRODUCTION. DURING the two years which had elapsed since the preceding speech, great changes had taken place, both in England and in Ireland, which made the passing of the Declaration certain, if strongly insisted upon by the people. Mr. Grattan, therefore, in moving it a second time, uses not so much the language of argu ment or persuasion, as of assured triumph. He speaks of it in his first sentence as if already carried. The object cured. SPEECH,' &c. I am now to address a free people. Ages have passed away, and this is the first already se moment in which you could be distinguished by that appellation. I have spoken on the subject of your liberty so often, that I have nothing to add, and have only to admire by what Heaven-directed steps you have proceeded, until the whole faculty of the nation is braced up to the act of her own deliverance. I found Ireland on her knees. I watched over her with an eternal solic.tude, and have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift-spirit of Molyneux-your genius has prevailed-Ireland is now a nation-in that new character I hail her; and, bowing to her august presence, I say, Esto perpetua 13 of Ire and th other countries. he was forced to assent to acts which deprived the Catholics of religious, and all the Irish of civil and commercial rights, though the Irish were the only subjects in these islands who had fought in his defense. But you have sought liberty on her own principles. See the Presbyterians of Bangor petition for the Catholics of the South! You, with difficulties innumerable, with dangers not a few, have done what your ancestors wished, but could not accomplish; and what your posterity may preserve, but will never equal. You have molded the jarring elements of your country into a nation, and have rivaled those great and ancient states whom you were taught to admire, and among whom you are now to be recorded. She is no longer a wretched colony, returning Comparison thanks to her Governor for his rapine, and to her King for his oppression; nor is she now a fretful, squabbling sectary, perplexing her little wits, and firing her furious statutes with bigotry, sophistry, disabilities, and death, to transmit to posterity insignificance and war. Look to the rest of Europe. Holland lives on the memory of past achievements. Sweden has lost her liberty. England has sullied her great name by an attempt to enslave her colonies! You are the only people-dom. you, of the nations in Europe, are now the only people who excite admiration; and in your present conduct, you not only exceed the present generation, but you equal the past. I am not afraid to turn back and look antiquity in the face. The Revolution, that great event-whether you call it ancient or modern, I know not-was tarnished with bigotry. The great deliverer-for such I must ever call the Prince of Nassauwas blemished by oppression. He assented to This speech and the preceding are from a copy corrected by Mr. Grattan, and published in 1821. 2 William Molyneux, the mathematician and astronomer, was originally bred to the law, and, being deeply interested for his countrymen, he wrote his celebrated work on the rights of the Irish Parliament, the first and ablest work ever produced on the subject. He was born in 1656, and died in 1698. 'Let ber endure forever. In this proceeding you had not the advantages which were common to other great Her inferior countries-no monuments, no trophies, advantages. none of those outward and visible signs of greatness, such as inspire mankind, and connect the ambition of the age which is coming on with the example of that which is going off, and forms the descent and concatenation of glory. No! You have not had any great act recorded among all your misfortunes; nor have you one public tomb to assemble the crowd, and speak to the living the language of integrity and freeYour historians did not supply the want of monuments. On the contrary, those narrators of your misfortunes who should have felt for your wrongs, and have punished your oppressors with oppression's natural scourge, the moral indignation of history, compromised with public villainy, and trembled; they recited your violence, they suppressed your provocation, and wrote in the chain that entrammeled their country. I an come to break that chain; and I congratulate my country, who, without any of the advantages I speak of, going forth, as it were, with nothing but a stone and a sling, and what oppression could not take away, the favor of Heaven, ac. complished her own redemption, and left you nothing to add, and every thing to admire. You want no trophy now-the records of Parliament are the evidence of your glory. I beg to observe, that the deliverance of Ire land has proceeded from her own right hand Her deliver by herself. I rejoice at it; for, had the great acquisition of your freedom proceeded from the ance achieved bounty of England, that great work would have been defective. would have been defective both in renown and security. It was necessary that the soul of the country should have been exalted by the act of her own redemption, and that England should withdraw her claim by operation of treaty, and not of mere grace and condescension. A gratuitous act of Parliament, however express, would have been revocable; but the repeal of her claim, under operation of treaty, is not. In that case, the Legislature is put in covenant, and bound by the law of nations, the only law that can legally bind Parliament. Never did this country stand so high. England and Ireland treat ex æquo. Ireland transmits to the King her claim of right, and requires of the Parliament of England the repeal of her claim of power, which repeal the English Parliament is to make under the force of a treaty, which depends on the law of nations—a law which can not be repealed by the Parliament of England. I rejoice that the people are a party to this treaty, because they are bound to preserve it. There is not a man of forty shillings freehold that is not associated in this our claim of right, and bound to die in its defense-cities, counties, associations, Protestants, and Catholics. It seems as if the people had joined in one great sacrament. A flame has descended from heaven on the intellect of Ireland, and plays round her head with a concentrated glory. the Volun ciations. There are some who think, and a few who Defense of declare, that the associations to which teer Asso- I refer are illegal. Come, then, let us try the charge. And first, I ask, what were the grievances? An army imposed on us by another country-that army rendered perpetual-the Privy Council of both countries made a part of our Legislature—our Legislature deprived of its originating and propounding poweranother country exercising over us supreme legislative authority-that country disposing of our property by its judgments, and prohibiting our trade by its statutes! These were not grievances, but spoliations; they left you nothing. When you contended against them, you contended for the whole of your condition. When the minister asks by what right, we refer him to our Maker. We sought our privileges by the right which we have to defend our property against a robber, our life against a murderer, our country against an invader, whether coming with civil or military force, a foreign army, or a foreign Legislature. This is a case that wants no precedent. The revolution wanted no precedent; for such things arrive to reform a course of bad precedents, and, instead of being founded on precedent, become such. The gazing world, whom they came to save, begins by doubt and concludes by worship. Let other nations be deceived by the sophistry of courts-Ireland has studied politics in the lair of oppression; and, taught by suffering, comprehends the right of subjects and the duty of kings. Let other nations imagine that subjects are made for the Monarch; but we conceive that kings, and Parliaments like kings, are made for the subject. The House of Commons, honorable and right honorable as it may be the Lords, noble and illustrious as we pronounce them, are not original, but derivative. Session after session they move their periodical orbit about the source of their being-the NATION. Even the King-Majesty-must fulfill her due and tributary course round that great luminary; and, created by its beam and upheld by its attraction, must incline to that light or go out of the system. Argument re opposers of Ministers-we mean the ministers who have been dismissed; I rely on the good intentions of the present-former minis-torted on the ters, I say, have put questions to us. the Declara We beg to put questions to them. They desired to know by what authority this nation had acted. This nation desires to know by what authority they acted. By what authority did government enforce the articles of war? By what authority does government establish the post-office? By what authority are our merchants bound by the East India Company's charter? By what authority has Ireland one hundred years been deprived of her export trade? By what authority are her peers deprived of their judicature? By what authority has that judicature been transferred to the peers of Great Britain, and our property, in its last resort, referred to the decision of a non-resident, unauthorized, illegal, and unconstitutional tribu nal? Will ministers say it was the authority of the British Parliament? On what ground, then, do they place the question between the government on one side, and the people on the other? The government, according to their own statement, has been occupied to supersede the lawgiver of the country, and the people to restore him. His Majesty's late ministers thought they had quelled the country when they bought the newspapers, and they represented us as wild men, and our cause as visionary; and they pensioned a set of wretches to abuse both; but we took little account of them or their proceedings, and we waited, and we watched, and we moved, as it were, on our native hills, with the minor remains of our parliamentary army, until that minority became Ireland! Let those ministers now go home, and ongratulate their king on the deliverance of his people. Did you imagine that those little parties, whom, three years ago, you beheld in awkward squads parading the streets, would arrive to such distinction and effect? What was the cause? For it was not the sword of the volunteer, nor his muster, nor his spirit, nor his promptitude to put down weidental disturbance, public discord, nor his own unblamed and distinguished deportment: this was much; but there was more than this. The Lord North and his associates are here referred to The "present" ministers were Lord Rokizgha Lord Shelburne, Mr. Fox, &c., composing the Whig administration, which followed that I North That bill must fall, or the Constitution can not stand. That bill was originally limited by this House to two years, and it returned from England without the clause of limitation. What! a bill making the army independent of Parlia ment, and perpetual? I protested against it then; I have struggled with it since; and I am now come to destroy this great enemy of my country. The perpetual Mutiny Bill must van upper orders, the property and the abilities of the country, formed with the Volunteer; and the volunteer had sense enough to obey them. This united the Protestant with the Catholic, and the landed proprietor with the people. There was still more than this-there was a continence which confined the corps to limited and legitimate objects. There was a principle which preserved the corps from adultery with French politics. There was a good taste which guard-ish out of the statute book. The excellent tract ed the corps from the affectation of such folly. of Molyneux was burned-it was not answered, This, all this, made them bold; for it kept them and its flame illumined posterity. This evil innocent, it kept them rational. No vulgar rant paper shall be burned; but burned like a felon, against England, no mysterious admiration of that its execution may be a peace-offering to the France, no crime to conceal, no folly to blush people, and that a Declaration of Right may be for, they were what they professed to be; and planted on its guilty ashes. A new Mutiny Bill that was nothing less than society asserting her must be formed, after the manner of England, liberty according to the frame of the British and a Declaration of Right flaming in its preConstitution-her inheritance to be enjoyed in amble. As to the legislative powers of the Pri perpetual connection with the British empire. vy Council, I conceive them to be utterly inad I do not mean to say that there were not divers missible, against the Constitution, against the violent and unseemly resolutions. The immensi- privileges of Parliament, and against the dignity ty of the means was inseparable from the ex- of the realm. Do not imagine such power to cess. Such are the great works of nature-such | be a theoretical evil; it is, in a very high deis the sea; but, like the sea, the waste and ex-gree, a practical evil. I have here an inventory cess were lost in the immensity of its blessings, of bills, altered and injured by the interference benefits, and advantage; and now, having given a Parliament to the people, the Volunteers will, I doubt not, leave the people to Parliament, and thus close, pacifically and majestically, a great work, which will place them above censure and above panegyric. Those associations, like other institutions, will perish; they will perish with the ⚫ occasion that gave them being; and the gratitude of their country will write their epitaph: "This phenomenon, the departed Volunteer, justified by the occasion, with some alloy of public evil, did more public good to Ireland than all her institutions. He restored the liberties of his country; and thus, from his grave, he answers his enemies." Connected by freedom, as well as by allegiEngland and ance, the two nations, Great Britain Ireland now and Ireland, form a constitutional con of the Privy Councils-Money Bills originated by them-Protests by the Crown, in support of those Money Bills--prorogation following those Protests. I have a Mutiny bill of 1780, altered by the Council and made perpetual-a bill in 1778, where the Council struck out the clause repealing the Test Act-a Militia Bill, where the Council struck out the compulsory clause, requiring the Crown to proceed to form a militia, and left it optional to his majesty's ministers whether there should be a militia in Ireland. I have the Money Bill of 1775, when the Council struck out the clause enabling his majesty to take a part of our troops for general service, and left it to the minister to withdraw the forces against act of Parliament. I have to state the altered Money Bill of 1771; the altered Money Bill of 1775; the altered Money Bill of 1780. confederate. federacy as well as an empire. The The day would expire before I could recount Crown is one link, the Constitution another; and, their ill doings. I will never consent to have in my mind, the latter link is the most powerful. men-God knows whom-ecclesiastics, &c., &c.; You can get a king any where; but England is men unknown to the constitution of Parliament, the only country with whom you can get and and only known to the minister who has breathparticipate a free Constitution. This makes En-ed into their nostrils an unconstitutional exist. gland your natural connection, and her king your natural as well as your legal sovereign. This is a connection, not as Lord Coke has idly said, not as Judge Blackstone has foolishly said, not as other judges have ignorantly said, by conquests; but, as Molyneux has said, and as I now say, by compact-that compact is a free Constitution. Suffer me now to state some Essential prinriples of the of the things essential to that free Constitution. They are as follows: The independency of the Irish Parliament-the exclusion of the British Parliament from any authority in this realm-the restoration of the Irish judicature, and the exclusion of that of Great Britain. As to the perpetual Mutiny Bill, t must be more than limited-it must be effaced. Confederacy. ence-steal to their dark divan, which they call the Council, to do mischief, and make nonsense of bills which their Lordships, the House of Lords, or we, the House of Commons, have thought good and meet for the people. No! These men have no legislative qualifications; they shall have no legislative power. 1st. The repeal of the perpetual Mutiny Bill, and the dependency of the Irish army on the Irish Parliament; 2d. The abolition of the legislative power of the Council; 3d. The abrogation of the claim of England to make law for Ireland; the exclusion of the En glish House of Peers, and of the English King's Bench from any judicial authority in this realm; the restoration of the Irish Peers to their fina' judicature; the independency of the Irish Par liament in its sole and exclusive Legislature one step farther, and propose to impart the these are my terms. Mr. Grattan now moved the Declaration of Right, which was carried almost without a dissenting voice; and a bill soon after passed the British Parliament, ratifying the decision by repealing the oonoxious act of George I. privileges they enjoyed to the Roman Catholics, by making them voters. But this the Protest ants of neither party were willing to do. The Romanists comprised three quarters of the pop. ulation; very few of them could read or write; and both parties—the Patriots as well as the Aristocracy-equally shrunk from the experi ment of universal suffrage among this class of their fellow-citizens. Under these circumstan ces, the call for Parliamentary Reform was very faintly echoed by the great body of the people The Convention of Volunteers had none of that power which they had previously exerted on the question of Parliamentary Independence. A bill was brought into the House of Commons by Mr Flood for extending the right of suffrage, but it was voted down in the most decisive manner. The bitterest animosities now prevailed, and new subjects of contention arose from time to time. Associations were formed, at a later period, under the name of United Irishmen, designed to promote the cause of liberty. Rash men, in many instances, gained the ascendency; an insurrection was planned, and in part commenced; and measures of great severity were resorted to by the British government to restore order. The more sober part of the community became weary of these contentions, and some began to look to a union with England as the only safeguard of their persons and property The British ministry had the strongest motives to urge on this measure in order to prevent future troubles; and in the year 1800, to a great extent by the use of bribes, the union was ef fected, and from this time the Parli mert of Ire The Parliament of Ireland was at last independent; but the beneficial results, so glowingly depicted by Mr. Grattan, were never realized; all were sacrificed and lost through a spirit of selfishness and faction. The Protestants of Ireland were divided into two parties, the Aristocracy and the Patriots. The former were exclusive, selfish, and arrogant; the latter were eager for reform, but too violent and reckless in the measures they employed to obtain it. The Parliament of Ireland was a borough Parliament, the members of the House of Commons being, in no proper sense, representatives of the people, but put in their places by a comparatively small number of individuals belonging to the higher classes. These classes, while they were among the foremost to demand that "England should not give law to Ireland," were equally determined that the Irish Parliament, in making laws, should do it for the peculiar benefit of the Aristocracy, and the support of their hereditary influence. The Patriots, on the other hand, demanded Parliamentary Reform, and clamored for universal suffrage. To enforce their claims, they assembled a Convention of the Volunteers at Dublin in 1783, with a view to influence, and perhaps overawe the Parliament. Their suceess would have been certain if they had gone, land became extinct. INVECTIVE OF MR. GRATTAN AGAINST MR. FLOOD, DELIVERED OCTOBER 28, 1783. It has been said by Mr. Flood, that "the pen | have been corrupt; and in the last, seditious; would fall from the hand, and the fetus of the that after an envenomed attack on the persons mind would die unborn," if men had not a privilege to maintain a right in the Parliament of England to make law for Ireland. The affectation of zeal, and a burst of forced and metaphorical conceits, aided by the arts of the press, gave an alarm which, I hope, was momentary, and which only exposed the artifice of those who were wicked, and the haste of those who were deceived. But it is not the slander of an evil tongue that can defame me. I maintain my reputation in public and in private life. No man who has not a bad character can ever say that I deceived; no country can call me cheat. But I will suppose such a public character. I will suppose such a man to have existence. I will begin with his character in its political cradle, and I will follow him to the last state of political dissolution. I will suppose him, in the first stage of his life, to have been intemperate; in the second, to and measures of a succession of viceroys, and |