thing that could come from them, he could scarcely believe his senses, when he beheld a gentleman (Mr. Sheridan), who for many weeks had concealed his intentions so effectually as to leave it a doubt whether he was friendly or hostile to the arrangement now depending, stand forth the avowed enemy of a part of the system which was necessarily connected with the whole, and take up a ground of opposition the most dangerous and inflammatory that could possibly suggest itself. But it was not to be wondered at that the conduct of the honourable gentleman should be so inconsistent, when it was remembered, how inconsistent all the measures of the party of which he was the mouth, were in themselves, and how inconsistent the persons who composed that party were with one another. Still the pursuits of that party, however various and however contradictory, had one uniform tendency. Whether they reprobated on this day, what they had approved on the preceding, or whether they abandoned a principle which they had before admitted; whether one individual differed from or coincided with the rest of his associates, still the effect of all their efforts, of all their perseverance, and of all their tergiversation was to be the same to embarrass and confound the measures of administration, to embroil and disunite the affections of their fellow-subjects, to excite groundless alarms, and on those groundless alarms to foment the most dangerous discontents. The noble lord in the blue ribbon, in assenting to the resolution, and the honourable gentleman in opposing it, had taken care to support their several opinions by the same argument, and that argument was, of all others, best calculated to promote the ultimate design of both, however different the modes they took to accomplish it-the jealousy and resentment of the sister kingdom. The resumption of legislative supremacy over Ireland was the ground of acquiescence in the one, of dissent in the other; and thus they divided between them the two features of the character which their right honourable friend, Mr. Fox, had shewn himself so ambitious to assume, that of an English and an Irish patriot. How gentlemen could think themselves warranted in setting up an opposition to measures, in favour of which they had borne more than a silent testimony, (for they had expressly acknowledged the several amendments to be such, as not only were in themselves unexceptionable, but had also the positive merit of correcting, in a great degree, the objectionable qualities of the original propositions,) was a circumstance only to be accounted for by those who, from a close attention to the conduct of the party, and a congeniality of sentiment with them, had brought themselves to understand and to adopt the whole of their system, and were thence enabled to see that it was a double game that they were playing, and that their appearing to oppose the resolutions by. arguments directly contrary to each other, was merely with a view to secure the same end, and to compass the same design. Mr. Fox began with remarking, that, in the personal and political character of the right honourable the chancellor of the exchequer, there were many qualities and habits that had often surprised him, and, he believed, had confounded the speculations of every man who had ever much considered or analyzed his disposition; but that his conduct on that night had reduced all that was unaccountable, incoherent, and contradictory in his character in times past, to a mere nothing. That he shone out in a new light, surpassing even himself, and leaving his hearers wrapt in amazement, uncertain whether most to wonder at the extraordinary speech they had just heard, or the frontless confidence with which that speech had been delivered. Such a farrago of idle and arrogant declamation, uttered in any other place, and by any other person, upon the subject in question, would naturally fill the members of that House with astonishment; but, spoken by that right honourable gentleman within those walls, in the presence of men who were witnesses of all the proceedings upon this business, every one of whom could bear testimony to the gross and unblushing fallacy of the right honourable gentlemanit was, Mr. Fox said, an act of boldness, a species of parliamentary hardihood, certainly not to be accounted for upon any known or received rules of common sense or common reason. I cannot (continued Mr. Fox) help remarking the vast disparity in the tone, the temper, and the style of expression exhibited by the right honourable gentleman upon this night, from those which he deemed it expedient to adopt when he opened the eighteen propositions to this House. night I quoted a passage, Telephus et Peleus, cum pauper exul et uterque, On that and quoted it to exemplify the change occasioned by the deplor able situation into which his rashness, his ignorance, or what is not more reputable than either, his servile adoption of other men's fancies, and thrusting forward the crude heap of discordant and dangerous materials which form this miserable project, had involved the right honourable gentleman. Upon that occasion, I could not help observing, that the ampullæ and the sesquipedalia verba - that the right honourable gentleman's magnificent terms, his verbose periods, and those big, bombastic sentiments which constitute, in general, the principal part of his orations, had for once forsaken him, or been relinquished, for language and for manners better accommodated to his disastrous condition. Then we saw the avowed confederacy of the right honourable gentleman with those about him, whose co-operation in the general system of his government he is commonly so anxious to disavow, but whose opinions he so uniformly propagates and asserts then we saw that preposterous ambition, that gaudy pride, and vaulting vanity, which glare upon the observer beyond all the other characteristic features of the right honourable gentleman, and which prompt him to look down with contempt on his political coadjutors-to fancy himself the great overseer, the surveyor-general of the British government - we saw this glittering assemblage melt away, and that right honourable gentleman descend to a curious and most affecting sympathy with the other supporters of this system, as well as into something like a modest and civil demeanor towards those who oppose it. But, alas! the right honourable gentleman's deviation into a moderate and humble course of argument,-into a course befitting a man detected in ten thousand instances of folly, precipitancy, rashness, weakness, and consummate ignorance of the subject in discussion, was but transient and temporary. The hopes of a reform in his conduct were as fallacious, even as the many hopes of other reforms which that right honourable gentleman has gulled a variety of persons in this country to entertain upon points of more importance. Upon this night, the right honourable gentleman has relapsed into his own favourite and darling habits — the ampullæ and sesquipedalia verba are again resumed, with additional redundancy. Nerved with new rancour, and impelled with fresh vehemence, the right honourable gentleman rushes blindly forward; but surely it cannot escape observation, that the display of these passions, and the resumption of that mode of reasoning, are the best proofs that the right honourable gentleman is, indeed, reduced to the last extremity; and, by the use of such arguments, that he shews himself destitute of any that better become a real statesman, or a great orator. Beaten out of every thing that bears the resemblance of argument, without the least shred or remnant of reasoning to support him, the right honourable gentleman is forced upon the rash and dangerous hazard of carrying the war into the enemy's camp; and finding it impossible to say one word in vindication of his own deformed and miserable system, he is obliged to throw out a series of invectives, and, by exhibiting a list of charges against us-charges which, the very moment he gave them utterance, he knew to be absolutely and entirely destitute of every vestige of truth to engage the attention, and divert the notice of the House from his own wretched and contemptible schemes. The admirable argument of my honourable friend (Mr. Sheridan) is answered with hard epithets, with strong assertions, with lofty phrases, with long and laboured calumnies, and with the usual round of redundant and disgusting egotisms. In proportion to the poverty of the cause he engages in, is the pompous assumption of the right honourable gentleman; and of all the various singularities which compose his character, nothing, I confess, amazes me so much as the perfect composure with which he attempts to criminate his adversaries, upon points in which he is himself, of all men living, the most vulnerable; and the steadiness and resolution with which he puts forth accusations, in desperate defiance of truth, and with as determined a contempt of prudence and propriety in the manner of urging them. Before I touch upon the charges to which I allude, I cannot help observing, with what special grace the right honourable gentleman ridicules long speeches with what a singular propriety he, of all the members in this House, attempts to correct others for occupying much of the time of the House. I do not intend to deny the right honourable gentleman the merit of great abilities, great eloquence, and great powers of pleasing his hearers; but of all the crimes to be urged against any person within these walls, the last, undoubtedly, for the right honourable gentleman to venture upon is, to charge the long duration of his speech as a fault against any member. The right honourable gentleman, like myself, is under the necessity of troubling this House much oftener, and for a much longer time, than is, perhaps, agreeable; and it ill becomes either of us to reprobate others for a practice we ourselves so frequently fall into. Grateful for the indulgence we are favoured with, we should certainly be the last to condemn that in which we ourselves are the greatest transgressors. And I shall drop this part of the subject, with only remarking, that if an almost uniform deviation from the immediate subject in discussion, - if abandoning liberal argument for illiberal declamation, - if frequently quitting sound sense for indecent sarcasms, and preferring to rouse the passions and inflame the prejudices of his auditory to the convincing their understandings and informing their judgments, tended to diminish the title of any member of this House to a more than common portion of its temper and endurance I do n know one gentleman who would have so ill-founded a claim upon it for such favours, as the right honourable gentleman himself. The right honourable gentleman has struggled much to fix a charge of inconsistency upon my noble friend, and upon my honourable friend near me; and such is the fatality of an inordinate appetite for accusation, that the only point by which he has chosen to illustrate this inconsistency, is a point that proves as clear as day-light, that both the one and the other is perfectly and thoroughly consistent. The noble lord supports the fourth pro position, because he thinks it makes laws no more for Ireland than is, in this instance, just. The honourable gentleman reprobates it, because he thinks it an insidious, deceitful, and treacherous manœuvre, to cheat the Irish out of their independence, and dupe them into servility, by prospects of advantages of another kind. The noble lord and the honourable gentleman have taken the same side, argued upon the same principle, and acted under the same impression, upon the same subject, from the first moment the right honourable gentleman introduced it to this House; their language has been unvarying, and their conduct in strict unison with their respective declarations. The noble lord has shewn the danger to the trade of England from the adoption of these propositions, and has, in my judgment, unanswerably proved, that the promised compensation is fallacious in the extreme; in both these positions my honourable friend concurs; nay, he goes farther, and demonstrates, that although he might wish well to the propositions as generally favourable to the trade of Ireland in their original state, the right honourable gentleman's alterations have so radically changed their nature, that Ireland will be the positive loser in these three great branches, viz. the American, West Indian, and East Indian trade; so that the only chance she has of benefit, or of indemnifying herself for the injury she receives by the change of her present system of trade in these great lines of commerce, consists solely in the hopes of underselling England in the English markets. He therefore considers the arrangement upon the whole as prejudicial to Ireland (independent of the attempt at resuming the power of legislation under the fourth proposition)-because it is not by the downfal of England that he wishes. Ireland to prosper. Thus, all my noble friend's argument tended to shew the danger to the manufactures and trade of England from the proposed system: my honourable friend admits, that Ireland's only source of benefit is confined to England, for that, in the arrangement of the foreign trade, every thing is against her; and in this point, so triumphantly dwelt upon by the right honourable gentleman as the criterion of their contradiction, nothing, in fact, appears but the most precise consistency on their part. This detection of his mistake may perhaps but I believe nothing can-teach the right honourable gentlemen to consider a charge before he makes it, and not to waste so much phlegm, nor expend so many fine periods, upon subjects which will only shew his own rashness, weakness, and, I had almost said, absurdity. But the right honourable gentleman seems determined, at all risks, to fill up the catalogue of accusations, and in the hey-day of his spleen, in the plenitude of his indignation, to |