year after year, the failure of their projects by the boldness of their falsehoods? Why pretend the instability of the French government, when, according to this supposition, it were not only stable, but irresistible, and the English ministry not only unstable, but impotent; or if stable, only so from pliant majorities, which in the end may produce not only their instability, but their punishment. Why omit the opportunities of peace? Why, in 1793, when the French were driven out of Brabant? Why, in 1795, when they were driven from the Rhine? Why force Holland to begin the the war? Why force the Emperor to continue it? It is true they have indeed talked of peace, but in the manner of their overtures they evidently meant a popular dread, and a parliamentary period. But stating what I believe was true, that the ministry were not apprised at first of the difficulties of the war; that in the progress they were not equal to the conduct of it; that England had not fair play in their hands; that she had not a fair trial for empire; that the business was above them; that she was wasted and scattered, and spent, and ninced in various mangled, miserable, and murderous expeditions; that the business was above her ministers; that they were weighed in the balance and found wanting; that, in addition to all these positive blunders, they did not discover one trace of genius, make one effort of talent, possess the merit of one noble failure; that she would have had a successful war, or saving peace, or a glorious struggle, if the late Lord Chatham had conducted the war; or, if the abilities of the present minister for war, were equal to his talents for debate; or, rather, if his stupendous talents for debate had not been matched by his equally stupendous and astonishing inability for war, and, in these times, for his situation; adding to this, that they had accompanied their constant failures with the most lively and false assurances of success, to delude their country to continue the war, necessary and just perhaps, if they had not rendered it hopeless; on this supposition, I say, what defence can be made; this defence only, that they have surrendered their system at last, at the expence of millions!

I ask whether this, their foreign system, is the only charge that can be brought, or made against ministers. 1 desire to know what has been their conduct to Ireland; their foreign system I have considered, and it is bad enough surely. What was their domestic? what their conduct to Ireland? This country is, if not the last, certainly the greatest card of the empire; every thing to the British nation here, is anxious in the extreme; here the new doctrine is

most formidable, because here the old doctrine has been most profligate and prolific; here the half-million for majorities has been proclaimed; here the best minister has been pronounced that man who bought Parliament the cheapest; here the profligacy of the practice has not fallen short of the theory..

The region this, the country and walk of the Lords of Buckingham and Westmoreland, and of the old court, for ages of peculation and plunder; here they had begun their system, by giving the administration of the government to the opposers of the constitution; here they had attempted to take back that constitution, by certain commercial propositions; here they had withdrawn the proffered trade, and swindled the revenue; here they had sold the peerage to buy the Commons. They had created at a stroke, in 1789, a new establishment of salaries, notoriously for that purpose; they had been, in the course of exercising a dispensing power, and disbursing money without the authority of law; they had robbed the Crown of its reversion; they scolded the people from the bar of the House of Commons; they had kicked their prayers after them; they had instructed grand juries to publish denunciations against the Catholics; they had then taken up the Catholics; they had then resumed the Protestant ascendancy; again they had taken up the Catholics, and again they had let them down; they had, in the progress of their defeat, promised a change of ministers and measures; they get a great supply; recal the minister for making the promises under their own authority, and tell the Catholics, whom they had deceived, that they must for ever remain disqualified for seats in Parliament, and offices in the state, for the better securing the Crown and the connection. The people petition; the ministry had answered their grants by disappointment; they then answered their petitions by fencibles. The army they had withdrawn when the French had threatened the country, and they pour it in, when the people petition the Crown. The leading Catholics, who had assisted in planning the petition to His Majesty, they had prosecuted without colour or pretence for high treason; the lower orders of the Catholics they gave up to an armed mob, to be exterminated with violence triumphant in a course of years, and put them out of the protection of the law; they do this, when, by their misconduct abroad, they had reason to apprehend invasion at home, and when they had so reduced the army that they had left His Majesty's government no chance for its safety, but in what I imagine now must be its best security the unanimity of his people.

If ever this country is lost to England, depend on it this system will be the cause. Lord Chatham had thought fit to unite the Scotch in the period of his victories; the present minister has thought fit to divide and degrade the Irish, in the hour of his defeats; in this their misconduct there was no foreign interference, no extrinsic misfortune; here the minister dominated all the events; here it was all their own bad conduct, bad sense, and bad manners. They could not govern the perfidy of the King of Prussia; admitted; but they could govern their own their own perfidy and their own insolence; I conceive a minister who had governed ignominiously abroad, far preferable to him who had governed unconstitutionally; I wish to know whether the injuries the minister has done the empire could be stated to have been compensated by the services he has done the constitution; the bills and acts of power, the traitorous correspondence, gunpowder, convention, indemnity, insurrection bills, the prosecution of the leading Catholics, some of these bills necessary, others of them entirely unnecessary; and, where unnecessary, highly criminal; and altogether forming such a mass of power, as, coupled with the mass of influence in the Crown, make your constitution a vision. Here is the home system, a system of influence, of coercion, and of proscription, with what effect on the public peace; the burning houses, the wandering families, and the violated offspring, and murdered parents of the northern Catholics, tell me that it has not been a system of peace; the declaration of the government that we must arm in county corps, in order to keep down insurrection; tell me that it has not been a system of affection; the foreign system has brought invasion to your door; the home system has destroyed that zeal and warm heart that should meet and repel him; under the influence of the two systems the cabinet meets; what cabinet? an ascendancy cabinet, under an Irish minister, sent here to throw out the Catholic bill, by a British minister, who recalled a Lord-lieutenant for proposing it!

Their difficulties are great; they are to persuade a people to make more than ordinary exertions, for less than ordinary protection; they are to persuade a people professedly proscribed from Parliament and the state, for the purpose of securing the Crown and the connection, to make voluntary, unusual, and enthusiastic professions of zeal, under that disqualification, for that proscriptive government; they are to persuade that people, who were told by some of your ministers that they must be, and whose King I fear was

told that they must be, ever disposed to subvert a Protestant government, though possessed of its privileges; to make without those privileges, voluntary enrolment under such minister, and under any person such minister should choose to appoint; they are to persuade those men whom they promised to make as tame as cats, such were the expressions, near the expressions, to become fiercer than subjects, and as fierce as lions, under the court standard of those who thus promised to make them tame as cats, and to ride rough-shod over them.

I approve much of those corps who adopted the true original principles of volunteer association, corps paid by themselves, and officers elected by the corps; honour to honour engaged, and freeman bound to freeman: such corps will be numerous, for they will be national. They are the true natural resident defence of the country. No minister can send them to the West Indies, and send Scotch or English fencibles in their place; but an ascendancy army will not do, a revenue army will not do, no more than church militants. You might as well, like the Pope, think of fighting your enemies by prayers, or as is done on Ash Wednesday, hope to disperse them by curses; or rather, as in this case, by one sect cursing another. Rely on it, ministers must reconcile, they must capitulate: it is not to them a new thing; they capitulated in 1793 to the Catholic claim. What great measure has been carried for this country but by their capitulation-the declaration of rights, &c. &c. &c.: nor can the English cabinet have any qualm on this occasion. The English cabinet have been of late years in the course of capitulation. They capitulated to America; they now capitulate to the French republic; and why not capitulate to Ireland? This country can only be saved by her own force; and her own force can only be procured by adopting the Catholics; and they can only be adopted by a total and entire change of maxims, measures, and manners, accompanied with a free and full participation of whatever privileges the constitution can boast; and, what is infinitely more essential, whatever privileges the constitution intended. This is the force, the power, the charm, the staff of your saint, that will banish from your isle all noxious animals; the wand that opens the sea to the English, and will wall it up against the French. Quick, very quick; you have not a moment to lose; you have given your fellow-subjects a share of your taxes, your defeats, and depopulation; kindly, very kindly, give them now a share of your blessings, whatever your ministers have left you. Let us make no more sacrifices of our liberties: let us now sacrifice our prejudices; they will ascend in incense, the best use you can make of them and

be a tiding to your God, that you are become a convert to your country.

Mr. Grattan concluded by moving the following amendment: "To represent to His Majesty that the best and most effectual measure we can recommend at this time for the support of Your Majesty's crown and dignity, and for calling forth the real strength and spirit of the country, is to unite the people of Ireland in a common interest, by adopting such measures and passing such laws as may communicate to all your Majesty's subjects the blessings and franchises of the constitution without distinction of religion."

Mr. W. B. Ponsonby seconded the amendment. It was opposed by Mr. G. Knox, Mr. Denis Browne, Sir Hercules Langrishe, Mr. Osborne, M. Alexander, Mr. Egan, Mr. Corry, Mr. Barrington, Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Pelham, the Attorney-general (Mr. Wolfe), Mr. Archdall, Mr. Stephen Moore, Mr. Saunderson, and Sir Boyle Roche. It was supported by Mr. Duquery, Mr. Curran, Mr. G. Ponsonby, and Mr. Fletcher. They urged the policy of uniting all parties against the common enemy, and this could only be done by extending to all the privileges of the constitution.

Mr. GRATTAN in reply said: I have been told that I am at the close of my political life. I will borrow a few moments of that life to repeat the sentiment, and re-assert a claim dear to my heart, however reduced our number, however solitary our phalanx. It has been objected, that the Catholic claim should not have been made the amendment of an address. To such an objection, it is necessary to reply very little. Claims of right, liberties, and franchises, redress of grievances, and removal of abuses, naturally belong to, and, where Parliaments do their duty, are inseparable from addresses, prodigal and abundant with the offers of lives and fortunes. To the address under their consideration such claim more particularly belongs, because it contains a new and further offer of life, in the inrolment of corps, which, if exclusive, were wicked, and if inclusive, unless freedom should accompany arms, were hazardous. It particularly becomes those who were connected with Lord Fitzwilliam's administration to make the amendment, because the plan of Catholic emancipation was a part of their plan of county armament; and, lastly, it is peculiarly seasonable now to advance the claim of the Catholic to sit in Parliament, as we are on the eve of a general election, and the loss of this session is to the Catholic the loss of nine years. I do allow that precedents, where the rights and franchises of the subject were made any part of an address to the Crown, were of late years few indeed. Addresses of late were unconditional surrender, and unqualified submission to every minister, to any minister, and