faith of false allies? Why hold out the failure of French resources? The country may have an excuse for continuing a war for a certain time, from a confidence in the ability and the assurances of her ministers; but ministers must know their own insufficiency and their own fallacy. Passing over both, let us ask this question- What reason do they give that they will conduct the war with more success hereafter? What new resources? What new allies? The right honourable member has not thought fit to mention one: no; you have lost your allies, and have kept your ministers. You are to persist in the war with a view to recover Belgium for the Emperor, with one ally only, which Belgium you lost, though supported by the confederacy of Europe. In the defeat of allies, the diminution of resources, and the conversion of old allies into new enemies, does the gentleman find his only hope and resource? It is not stated now that France is in the gulf of bankruptcy; he is ashamed to retail that nonsense. It is not stated now that the French are proceeding to a state of revolution. It is not stated that Belgium is disposed to detach herself from the French republic, and go back to the yoke of Austria; we remember she twice shook off that yoke within a few years last past. It is not stated, suppose you could detach, how you could detain for Austria her provinces, liable to the inroads of France, and now without any fortified town. No; nothing whatsoever is stated to give any new hope on the subject: and you are, on the credit of past defeat, and on the assurance of discredited understanding, to throw after what you have little probability to recover, the relics which ministers have left of British empire. In making this opposition, and thus refusing to encourage the prosecution of the war, it was not that I do not wish to recover Belgium, but I do not wish to hazard Ireland. The minister is now gambling, not with distant settlements, or West India islands, but with the home part and parcel of the British empire. It has been said, will not you support England in the war? It is not supporting England in the war. It was said some time ago, will not you approve of overtures of peace ? It is not approving of overtures of peace, but of the ministry playing tricks about war and peace!

Having relinquished the objects of the war then, and now all hopes and sincere dispositions towards obtaining a peace, and trying to suspend their destiny by making the situation of the empire as desperate as their own; I beg the House to consider, the question was not whether it was desirable, but possible, to recover Belgium; whether you are not more likely to lose part of what you have, than to recover

16

part of what you have lost. I beg to remind you, that as the old allies had fallen off, so new dangers had presented themselves; that it is no longer a question, whether you would be in Paris, but it was a few days ago a question,, whether the French would not take Cork. The argu

ment urged in favour of an address, encouraging England to prosecute the war, and founded on former support, is in point against that encouragement, for in fact, it amounts to this; you should encourage England to persist in a war, in which you have supported her with considerable damage to yourself, and with such effect on her as has not prevented the defeat of her allies and the ruin of her power. As the dangers of the war increase, its objects have vanished; the Scheldt, that is no more a contested point; the French republic, that is recognized. Holland, she is surrended to France, and her colonies plundered by England! One object only remains; Belgium, which, for any hope afforded by ministers, seems unattainable. All the objects of them are then given up by the ministry, except that object which they have no chance to recover. Those who vote for such addresses as this, do not appear to me to support the war, but the ministry in all their changes; who, whether they choose to treat with the French republic, or choose to acknowledge the French republic, or choose to make overtures of peace, or pronounce peace unattainable; equally meet with the same cry and the same support, and obtain the same confidence, or the same surrender of all judgment, enquiry, or check, on the part of Parliament. This country is the more interested to interpose between England and her fate, if Ireland were to partake of it. If she is to fall along with her, she should endeavour to prevent that fall; whereas, in the present case, she appears to me to join with the despair of ministers against the British empire, and to support, not that empire, but that cabinet against that empire, and, in combination with a set of ministers, to precipitate England, by the prosecution of a system which but this moment threatened the safety of one country and had near sunk the power of the other. If Ireland were the natural enemy to Great Britain, she should now enter with zeal in support of that system; she should endeavour to persuade Great Britain to spend more money and more men in pursuit of some object which she did not believe she could obtain, until her debt became so immense, and her continental influence so reduced, that she should cease to be a leading nation in Europe, and have in her own territory to encounter bankruptcy or revolution. The question before the House is not, whether this country should

go on with England in the war, but whether she should give her an extraordinary encouragement and exhortation to persist in it; whether we should say what we did not believe to be true, that we thought the ministry were sincere in their overtures for peace, and likely to be successful in the prosecution of the war.

The right honourable member* has, in the train of his speech, alluded to the yeoman corps, and has said that I have given that project but little assistance. The member is totally and grossly mistaken. That project was a measure of the administration of Lord Fitzwilliam, and defeated by the ministry to which that member belongs; it was planned and proposed to the English ministry in 1795, and was rendered abortive by that ministry, who thought it better to recal the Lordlieutenant, and reject the Catholic bill. It was his friends who betrayed that government, and forfeited their own honour, that prevented the yeomanry corps at that time; who, had they then taken place, would have had this advantage over his project, that they would have been formed on a principle of constitutional communication and equality, without distinction of religion, instead of the sparing introduction of some few Catholics; and also with this other advantage, that they would have had the superiority of two years' instead of two months' discipline. On this same principle, I wished to extend the service, by proposing, at the opening of the session, the Catholic emancipation, a national communication of privileges, as the best ground-work for a national communication of arms. If there were any reserve among the Catholics on the first establishment of these corps, it must be attributed to the principle of government in the rejection of that proposition. The existence of such a plan is, therefore, due to his predecessors, the limitation and the procrastination of it, to himself.

The right honourable member has, with great truth and justice, entered into a panegyric on the loyalty, the services, and the zeal of those very Roman Catholics; and he has extended his praise very justly to the lower orders among them; we thank him; he does them no more than justice. It was on that conviction we thought it perfectly safe to give them the blessings of the constitution, and introduced a bill in 1795, for that purpose; in doing which, we, together with that ministry, were dismissed from power and consultation by the friends of the honourable gentleman, who sent him over to oppose that bill; which he did with so much success, as to throw out that bill, with a memorable declaration, that he would resist with

*Mr. Pelham.

*

life and fortune the clamours of the Catholics; those very people on whom he has this day poured out so just and unbounded an encomium. He answers the shallow charge of that servant of government, who said the Catholics, as long as they retained the feelings of men, could never be loyal to the House of Hanover, but must always wish for a Popish government, and the subversion of the Protestant religion. Such a panegyric, coming from the minister, is not only a reprobation of the vile and impudent scurrility uttered by such servants, but it is, on his part, a recantation and a public renunciation of the justice of the proscriptive principle which brought him to this country; and it is also an involuntary, and therefore the more acceptable, praise of those men, who had the misfortune to be opposed by the right honourable gentleman in their endeavours to reward with privileges those subjects whose merits he has pronounced, though he has not as yet agreed to consider or reward.

I concur with those who express their wish to apply the attention of the House to the defence of the country; and one way of defending the country is, not to expose her; therefore I think it somewhat inadvisable to prompt England to prosecute her system of war, which had brought the French to our coast, without a fleet to oppose them. Another very natural way of defending the country, is to enquire what steps had been taken for that purpose, of defence, naval or military, for the last three years. We knew that, in point of fact, we had not been protected; we knew that, of the different fleets in different positions, none came to Ireland, though the French had left their harbour on the 19th of December, and had continued in the Irish harbour till the 3d or 4th of January. For this, it remains for us to demand a satisfactory explanation. It is idle to talk of defending the country, if you do not enquire into the conduct of ministers, when they appear to neglect it. Another way of defending the kingdom, is to unite her as much as possible; but that union is best to be procured, by giving the people what they justly claim; and the minister in this House allows they deserve rights and privileges. But a very different method has been taken in order to defend this country; and therefore it is that we are now to thank the wind and the weather. The method taken has been to sacrifice her privileges to her defence, and her defence to her ministers; that is, to sacrifice every thing to ministers, who appear to be more fortunate in defending themselves by a system of arbitrary laws against the constitution of the country, than in *The Attorney-general (Mr. Fitzgibbon).

defending the country by the British navy against the French.

After a short reply from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the House divided (at one o'clock), when there appeared Ayes 7, Noes 90. Tellers for the Ayes, Mr. Grattan and Mr. George Ponsonby; for the Noes, the honourable Captain

Pakenham.

CHANNEL TRADE.

January 25. 1797.

AT this period of time party politics ran very high in Ireland; the government had been not a little annoyed by the charges of bribery and corruption which had been brought against them in open Parliament, and which the most respectable members had pledged themselves to prove; the enquiry was, however, declined, and re-crimination was resorted to; the views of the opposition and their characters were traduced; the part they had taken in Lord Fitzwilliam's short administration was grossly misrepresented. The objects of the Roman Catholics, and their efforts to procure the restoration of their rights, were studiously calumniated, inside as well as outside the doors of Parliament; the speeches of a learned doctor in the Lower House, and those of a distinguished personage in the other, had contributed much to this species of warfare. Mr. Ponsonby, Mr. Curran, Mr. Grattan, Mr. Forbes, and Mr. Fletcher, were successively designated as persons, whose views and objects were dangerous and mischievous. To pass over such proceedings in silence was no longer possible; and, accordingly, on the question of the channel trade, Mr. Grattan took an opportunity to vindicate the character of the opposition and his own; and on this day he spoke as follows:

He said: It was his intention to renew, in this session, his motion relative to the channel trade; he would, however, postpone it for a short time, to give a right honourable member (Mr. Pelham,) time to endeavour to settle that question; that if the member failed, or did not speedily return, he would then make his motion. I am not to be deterred by calumny on that or any other subject. I have been assailed with much wild abuse. It has become so nonsensical and disgusting, as even to charge our party with having introduced the place and pension bill, with a view to disunite the countries. I beg to say, that the pension bill was introduced in 1785, when some of our party supported the government.