SPEECHES OF THE LATE RT. HON. HENRY GRATTAN, IN THE IRISH PARLIAMENT, IN 1780 AND 1782. Never before published. LONDON: PRINTED FOR JAMES RIDGWAY, PICCADILLY.. 1821. B2 12037.7.5° HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY DEPOSITED BY THE LIBRARY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Oct. 21, 1939 T. C. HANSARD, Printer, Peterborough-court, Fleet-street, London. PREFACE. 2 THE following Speeches were revised, and were left by Mr. Grattan, and it was his wish that they should be published. They are accordingly published, and as he left them. The proceedings in the English and in the Irish Houses of Parliament, on the question to which they relate, are added, and are placed in the Appendix. These Speeches may be interesting in England they ought to be so in Ireland; for they may be said to contain a history of that political revolution which they mainly contributed to accomplish, and which produced a moral revolution in the country, in many respects similar to that of 1688. It formed the principal event of his life, the most creditable to his fame, the most important to Ireland. Of her previous condi tion, it is unnecessary to speak; of that which followed, I must be permitted to say, that his exertions, and her spirit at that time, secured to her the invaluable benefit of an independent resident legislature; that her Gentry acquired influence and power, her Nobility consequence and privileges; that their attention and their interests were con fined to their country, and were more exclusively Irish; and there existed throughout Ireland much public feeling and great zeal on public questions,-the effect of that liberty and of that independence, which it was the fortune of her Parliament to obtain at one period by the Declaration of her. Rights, and to surrender at another by the measure of the Union. : London, JAMES GRATTAN. SPEECHES, &c. [The Speech which introduced the Declaration of RightSpoken the 19th of April, 1780.] I HAVE intreated 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. If I had lived when the 9th of William took away the woollen manufacture, or when the 6th 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 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 B |