city the American appoints for empire, sends forth her ambassadors to the different kings in Europe, and manifests to the world her independency and power; do you imagine you will persuade Ireland to be satisfied with an English Parliament making laws for her; satisfied with a refusal to her loyalty, of those privileges which were offered to the arms of America? How will individuals among you like this? Some of the gentlemen whom I now see in their places, are the descendants of kings; the illustrious gentleman* on the far bench; my illustrious † friend near me. Will they derogate from the royalty of their forefathers, bow their honoured heads, or acknowledge the crown of their ancestors, or more than regal power on the brow of every fortyshilling freeholder in England, or on any front except that of His Majesty? Are the American enemies to be free, and these royal subjects slaves? or in what quality does His Majesty choose to contemplate the Irish hereafter? His subjects in parliament, or his equals in congress? Submission, therefore, will not do: there remains, then, but one way; assert the independency of your parliament. What do you wait for? Do you wait for a peace; till the volunteer retires, and the minister replies by his cannon? The Stag frigate is now in your harbour, or do you wait for more calamities in the fortunes of England, till the empire is a wreck, and the two countries go down together? or do you delay, till Providence, beholding you on your knees, shall fall in love with your meanness, and rain on your servility constitution like manna. You go to the house of God when you want heat or moisture, and you interfere with God's providence by your importunities. Are the princes of the earth more vigilant than the Almighty, that you should besiege the throne of mercy with your solicitations, and hold it unnecessary to admonish the King? or do you wait till your country speaks to you in thunder? Let me conclude by observing, that you have the two claims before you; the claim of England to power, and of Ireland to liberty: and I have shown you, that England has no title to that power to make laws for Ireland; none by nature, none by compact, none by usage, and none by conquest; and that Ireland has several titles against the claims of England;-a title by nature, a title by compact, and a title by divers positive acts of parliament; a title by charter, and by all the laws by which England possesses her liberties;-by England's interpretation of those laws, by her renunciation of conquest, and her acknowledgment of the law of original compact.

I now move you,

* Mr. O'Hara.

† Mr. O'Neill.

That an humble address be presented to His Majesty, to assure His Majesty of our most sincere and unfeigned attachment to His Majesty's person and government.

To assure His Majesty, that the people of this country are a free people.

That the crown of Ireland is an imperial crown, and the kingdom of Ireland a distinct kingdom, with a parliament of her own, the sole legislature thereof.

To assure His Majesty, that, by our fundamental laws and franchises, (laws and franchises which we on the part of the nation do claim as her birthright,) the subjects of this kingdom cannot be bound, affected, or obliged by any legislature, save only by the King, Lords, and Commons of this His Majesty's realm of Ireland, nor is there any other body of men who have power or authority to make laws for the same.

To assure His Majesty, that His Majesty's subjects of Ireland conceive that in this privilege is contained the very essence of their liberty, and that they tender it as they do their lives, and accordingly have with one voice declared and protested against the interposition of any other parliament in the legislation of this country.

To assure His Majesty, that we have seen with concern the Parliament of Great Britain advance a claim to make law for Ireland; and that this anxiety is kept alive, when we perceive the same Parliament still persists in that claim, as may appear by recent British acts which affect to bind Ireland, but to which the subjects of Ireland can pay no obedience.

To assure His Majesty, that, next to our liberties, we value our connexion with Great Britain; on which we conceive, at this time most particularly, the happiness of both kingdoms intimately depends, and which, as it is our most sincere wish, so shall it be our principal study, to cultivate and render perpetual: that, under this impression, we cannot suggest any means whereby such connexion can be so much improved and strengthened, as by a renunciation of the claim of the British Parliament to make laws for Ireland—a claim useless to England, cruel to Ireland, and without any foundation in law.

That with a high sense of the magnanimity and justice of the British character, and in the most entire reliance on His Majesty's paternal care, we have set forth our rights and sentiments, and without prescribing any mode to His Majesty, we throw ourselves on his royal wisdom.

F

TRIUMPH OF IRISH INDEPENDENCE.

16th April, 1782.

Mr. GRATTAN rose, and spoke as follows:

I am now to address a free people: ages have passed away, and this is the first 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 solicitude; I 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!

She is no longer a wretched colony, returning thanks to her governor for his rapine, and to her king for his oppression; nor is she now a squabbling, fretful 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, and contemplate yourself, and be satisfied. 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-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 Nassau,) was blemished with oppression; he assented to, 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 defence. But you have sought liberty on her own principle: see the Presbyterians of Bangor petition for the freedom of the Catholics of Munster. 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 moulded the jarring

elements of your country into a nation, and have rivalled those great and ancient commonwealths, whom you were taught to admire, and among whom you are now to be recorded: in this proceeding you had not the advantages which were common to other great countries; no monuments, no trophies, 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 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 freedom.

Your historians did not supply the want of monuments; on the contrary, these narrators of your misfortunes, who should have felt for your wrongs, and have punished your oppressors with oppressions, natural scourges, the moral indignation of history, compromised with public villany and trembled; they excited your violence, they suppressed your provocation, and wrote in the chain which entrammelled their country. I am 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 favour of Heaven, accomplished 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 Ireland has proceeded from her own right hand; I rejoice at it, for had the great requisition of your freedom proceeded from the bounty of England, that great work 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 cannot 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 defence; cities, counties, associations, Protestants and Catholics; it seems as if the people had joined in one great national sacrament; a flame has descended from heaven on the intellect of Ireland, plays round her head, and encompasses her understanding with a consecrated glory.

There are some who think, and a few who declare, that the associations to which I refer are illegal: come, then, let us try the charge, and state the grievance. 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 power; another 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, which left you nothing. When you contended against them, you contended for the whole of your condition; when the minister asked, 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 come 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 rights 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 subjects. The House of Commons, honourable and right honourable 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's Majesty must fulfil his 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.

Ministers, we mean the ministers who have gone out, (I rely on the good intentions of the present,) former ministers, I say, have put questions to us; we beg to put questions to them. They desired to know by what authority this nation has acted. This nation desires to