contending against one man, an humble individual, to you a Leviathan! the English Attorney-general, who advises, in the case of Irish bills, and exercises legislation in his own person, and makes your parliamentary deliberations a blank, by altering your bills or suppressing them? and have you not yet been able to conquer 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 these things will follow in the train of your consequence. I shall be told that titles are shaken, being vested by force of English acts; but in answer to that, I observe, time may be a title, acquiescence a title, forfeiture a title; but an English act of parliament certainly cannot it is an authority, which, if a judge would charge, no jury would find, and which all the electors in Ireland have already 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, (Mr. Yelverton) has a Bill of Confirmation; we do not come unprepared to Parliament. I am not come to shake property, but to confirm property and restore freedom. The nation begins to form; we are moulding into a people; freedom asserted, property secured, and the army (a mercenary band) likely to be restrained by law. Never was such a revolution accomplished in so 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 state it, to your estates, without an assertion of your constitution, or a law for your army; and this state of unexampled private and public insecurity, this anarchy raging in the kingdom for eighteen months, these mock moderators would have had the presumption to call peace.

I shall be told, that the judges will not be swayed by the resolution of this House, Sir; that the judges will not be borne down by the resolutions of Parliament, not founded in law, I am willing to believe; but the resolutions of this House, founded in law, they will respect most exceedingly. I shall always rejoice at the independent spirit of the distributors of the law, but must lament that hitherto they have given no such symptom. The judges of the British nation, when they adjudicated against the laws of that country, pleaded precedent, and the prostration and profligacy of a long tribe of subservient predecessors, and were punished. The judges of Ireland, if they should be called upon, and should plead sad necessity, the thraldom of the times, and above all, the silent fears of Parliament, they, no doubt, will be

excused: but when your declarations shall have protected them from their fears; when you shall have emboldened the judges to declare the law according to the charters, I make no doubt they will do their duty; and your resolution, not making a new law, but giving new life to the old ones, will be secretly felt and inwardly acknowledged, and there will not be a judge who will not perceive, to the innermost recess of his tribunal, the truth of your charters and the vigour of your justice.

The same laws, the same charters, communicate to both kingdoms, Great Britain and Ireland, the same rights and privileges; and one privilege above them all is, that communicated by Magna Charta, by the 25th of Edward the Third, and by a multitude of other statutes, "not to be bound by any act except made with the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, and freemen of the commonalty," viz. of the parliament of the realm. On this right of exclusive legislation are founded the Petition of Right, Bill of Right, Revolution, and Act of Settlement. The King has no other title to his crown than that which you have to your liberty; both are founded, the throne and your 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 for the liberties of Ireland: the Act of Settlement is an act of rebellion, or the declaratory statute of the 6th of George the First an act of usurpation; for both cannot be law.

I do not refer to doubtful history, but to living record; to common charters; to the interpretation England has put upon these charters; an interpretation not made by words only, but crowned by arms;-to the revolution she had formed upon them, to the king she has deposed, and to the king she has established; and above all, to the oath of allegiance solemnly plighted to the house of Stuart, and afterwards. set aside, in the instance of a grave and moral people absolved by virtue of these very charters.

And as any thing less than liberty is inadequate to Ireland, so is it dangerous 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 her equal; 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, insulted with her protection, while we returned thanks for her condescension, is a system of meanness and misery which has expired in our determination, as I hope it has in her magnanimity.

There is no policy left for Great Britain but to cherish the remains of her empire, and do justice to a country who is determined to do justice to herself, certain that she gives nothing equal to what she received from us when we gave her Ireland.

With regard to this country, England must resort to the free principles of government, and must forget that legislative power which she has exercised to do mischief to herself; she must go back to freedom, which, as it is the foundation of her constitution, so is it the main pillar of her empire; it is not merely the connection of the crown, it is a constitutional annexation, an alliance of liberty, which is the true meaning and mystery of the sisterhood, and will make both countries one arm and one soul, replenishing from time to time, in their immortal connection, the vital spirit of law and liberty from the lamp of each other's light; thus combined by the ties of common interest, equal trade and equal liberty, the constitution of both countries may become immortal, a new and milder empire may arise from the errors of the old, and the British nation assume once more her natural station-the head of mankind.

That there are precedents against us I allow-acts of power I would call them, not 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 weakness of the times; the tyranny of one side, the feebleness of the other, the law of neither; we will not be bound by them; or rather, in the words of the declaration of right, "no doing judgment, proceeding, or any wise to the contrary, shall be brought into precedent or example." Do not then tolerate a power-the power of the British Parliament over this land, which has no foundation in utility or necessity, or empire, or the laws of England, or the laws of Ireland, or the laws of nature, or the laws of God,-do not suffer it to have a duration in your mind.

Do not tolerate that power which blasted you for a century, that power which shattered your loom, banished your manufactures, dishonoured your peerage, and stopped the growth of your people; do not, I say, be bribed by an export of woollen, or an import of sugar, and permit that power which has thus withered the land to remain in your country and have existence in your pusillanimity.

Do not suffer the arrogance of England to imagine a surviving hope in the fears of Ireland; 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 formation of apology, you can palliate such a commission to your hearts, still less to your children, who will sting you with their curses in your grave for having interposed between them and their Maker, robbing them of an immense occasion, and losing an opportunity which you did not create, and can never restore.

Hereafter, when these things shall be history, your age of thraldom and poverty, your sudden resurrection, commercial redress, and miraculous armament, shall the historian stop at liberty, and observe, -that here the principal men among us fell into mimic trances of gratitude, they were awed by a weak ministry, and bribed by an empty treasury, and when liberty was within their grasp, and the temple opened her folding doors, and the arms of the people clanged, and the zeal of the nation urged and encouraged them on, that they fell down, and were prostituted at the threshold.

I might, as a constituent, come to your bar, and demand my liberty. I do call upon you, by the laws of the land and their violation, by the instruction of eighteen counties, by the arms, inspiration, and providence of the present moment, tell us the rule by which we shall go,-assert the law of Ireland,-declare the liberty of the land.

I will not be answered by a public lie, in the shape of an amendment; neither, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe, in this our island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, unless it be the ambition to break your chain, and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking to his rags: he may be naked, he shall not be in iron; and I do see the time is at hand, the spirit is gone forth, the declaration is planted; and though great men should apostatize, yet the cause will live; and though the public speaker should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ which conveyed it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, will not die with the prophet but survive him.

I shall move you, "That the King's most excellent Majesty, and the Lords and Commons of Ireland, are the only power competent to make laws to bind Ireland."

CATHOLIC QUESTION.

February 20th, 1782.

On this day the House went into a committee on the bill, when the privileges proposed to be restored to the Roman Catholics were gone into at length: they went, 1st, to the enjoyment of property; 2dly, the free exercise of their religion; 3dly, education; 4thly, marriage; 5thly, self-defence. The first amendment moved was, That Catholics should be empowered to take, purchase, hold, and inherit estates in fee simple: this clause was opposed by Mr. Rowley, Mr. St. George, and Mr. Wynn; it was supported by Mr. Denis Daly, Sir Hercules Langrishe, and Mr. Flood, who said, that although the Catholics should be allowed to purchase lands, they should not be allowed to possess any power in the state; that the House should distinguish between the rights of property and the rights of power; "though I would extend toleration to the Roman Catholics, yet I would not wish to make a change in the state, or enfeeble the government."

Mr. GRATTAN said, I object to any delay which can be given to this clause. We have already considered the subject on a larger scale, and this is but a part of what the clause originally contained. We have before us the example of England, who, four years ago, granted Catholics a right of taking land in fee. The question is merely, whether we shall give this right or not; and if we give it, whether it shall be accompanied by all its natural advantages. Three years ago, when this question was debated in this House, there was a majority of three against granting Catholics estates in fee, and they were only allowed to take leases for 999 years. The argument then used against granting them the fee was, that they might influence electors. It has this day been shewn, that they may have as effectual an influence by possessing leases of 999 years as they can have by possessing the fee. At that time we might have been somewhat prejudiced against granting Roman Catholics estates in fee; but their conduct since that period should fully convince us of their true attachment to their country. When this country had resolved no longer to crouch beneath the burden of oppression that England had laid upon her, when she armed in defence of her rights, and a high-spirited people demanded a free trade, did the Roman Catholics desert their countrymen? No; they were found among the foremost. When it was afterwards thought necessary to assert a free constitution, the Roman Catholics displayed their public virtue; they did not endeavour to take advantage of your situation; they did not endeavour to make terms for themselves, but they entered frankly and heartily into the cause of their country, judging by their own virtue that they might depend upon your generosity for their reward: but now, after you have