We beg leave to congratulate your excellency and ourfelves upon your appointment to the government of this kingdom, at a period peculiarly aufpicious to Ireland.

In the fullest reliance upon your excellency's wifdom, juftice, and integrity, we anticipate the ad. vantages this kingdom muft derive from your excellency's adminiftration; and confider your excellency's appointment to prefide in it as a fresh instance of his majefty's paternal regard for the happinefs of his faithful people.

We are highly grateful for the warmth with which your excellency fignifies your fatisfaction at meeting us in the full poffeffion and enjoyment of thofe conftitutional and commercial rights, which were fo firmly established in the laft parliament.

We trust that the unequivocal proofs given by Great Britain of her facred regard to the adjuftment then made with Ireland, cannot fail to cement the union, and ftrengthen the mutual confidence between two kingdoms, the true interefts of which are and muft ever be infeparable.

We beg leave to fhare with your excellency the fatisfaction you exprefs at the fuccefs of his ma jefty's endeavours to refore the bleffings of peace to his faithful people.

We fhall, in purfuance of your excellency's wife and feasonable advice, fhew our readiness to deliberate upon the measures pointed out by your excellency, as well for regulating the judicature of the court of admiralty, and the new establishment of the poft-of

fice, as for promoting our commercial purfaits, and reaping the advantages to be derived from the reftoration of public tranquility. Permit us to add, that the recommendation of thofe measures by your excellency, affords the moft convincing evidence of your refpect for the rights, and your capacity to difcern, and defire to promote the interests of Ireland.

The measures purfued by government, by the advice of the Privy Council, to avert the miferies of an impending famine, if not strictly conformable to law, will appear, we doubt not, to have been urged by neceffity, and fo effential to the public good as to merit parliamentary indemnification.

We enjoy the highest pleasure in every addition to the domeftic happiness of our gracious fovereign, and participate in your excellency's fatisfaction at the birth of another princefs.

We truft our well known and moft fincere loyalty to his majefty, our confidence in the fincerity and good faith of our fifter kingdom, and the ample means we have lately acquired of becoming a great and commercial people, will difpofe us to carry on our confultations for his majefty's honour and the good of our country, with that duty, temper, and unanimity, which can alone render them fuccefsful, and perpetuate the harmony between the two kingdoms: and with the firmeft reliance on your excellency's pure and difinterested intentions towards us, we fhall, to the utmost of our power, fupport the honour of his majesty's

govern.

May it please your Excellency, WE, his majesty's most dutiful and loyal fubjects, the Commons of Ireland, in parliament affembled, beg leave to return your excellency our fincere thanks for your excellent fpeech from the throne. We confider it as a ftrong proof of his majefty's gracious attention to the happiness and profperity of Ireland, that he has been pleafed to commit the government of this kingdom to your excellency, in whofe firmnefs, justice, and integrity, we place the highest confidence that the powers of government will be directed to the true interefts of the people.

We trust that your excellency

will lay before his majesty the faithful and affectionate duty of his loyal fubjects of Ireland, and reprefent their cordial regard to Great Britain in its full light, thereby ftrengthening the mutual confidence of both kingdoms, and uniting them infeparably in fentiment, as they are in intereft. felves to the confideration of the We will affiduously apply ourmany important objects which your excellency has recommended to our attention. And we cannot refrain from acknowledging with gratitude the intereft which your excellency takes in the profperity of this kingdom, when in the very nature of thofe objects we trace the just and generous fpirit which points them out to us.

We will chearfully grant fuch fupplies, as after a proper inveftigation of the national accounts, fhall appear to be fitting for the honourable fupport of his majefty's government, confidering the abilities of the country.

Convinced of your excellency's difpofition to promote the welfare and happiness of this kingdom, we shall prove ourselves not unworthy the confidence you are pleafed to repofe in us, by contributing our beft endeavours to the eafe and honour of your excellency's administration.

T. ELLIS, Cler. Parl. Dom.Com.

His Excellency's Anfaver.

I return you my cordial thanks for this very affectionate and obliging addrefs. It is my earnest defire to merit your confidence, and I fhall anxiously endeavour to justify the favourable opinion you entertain

entertain of me by an unremitting attention to the welfare and happiness of this kingdom.

The following is a Tranflation of the Manifefto published by order of the Empress of Ruffia, upon the Occafion of her Troops entering the Peninfula of the Crimea, the Cuban, and the Island of Taman; which Countries are thereby declared to be annexed to her Imperial Majefty's Dominions.

WE Catherine the Second, by the Grace of God, Emprefs and Sole Monarch of all the Ruffias, &c. &c. &c,

UR laft war against the Ottoman empire having been attended with the moft fignal fuc. ceffes, we had certainly acquired the right of re-uniting to the territories of our empire the Crimea, of which we were in poffeffion; we, however, hefitated not to facrifice that, with many other conquefts, to our ardent defire of reestablishing the public tranquillity, and of confirming the good understanding and friendship between our empire and the Ottoman Porte. This motive induced us to ftipulate for the freedom and independence of the Tartars, whom we had reduced by our arms; hoping to remove for ever, by this means, every caufe of diffenfion, and even of coolnefs between Ruffia and the Ottoman Porte, exposed too often to thefe inconveniencies by the form of government which then fubfifted among the Tartars.

Great as were our facrifices and efforts for realising thofe hopes,

they were foon, to our great regret, confiderably diminished. The reftleffnefs natural to the Tartars, fomented by infinuations, the fource of which is not unknown to us, caufed them eafily to fall into a fnare laid by foreign hands, which had fowed amongst them the feeds of difturbance and confufion to fuch a degree, as to induce them to labour for the weakening, and even the total ruin of an edifice which our beneficent cares had erected for the happinefs of that nation, by procuring them liberty and independence, under the authority of a chief elected by themfelves. Hardly was their khan established accor ding to this new form of government, before he faw himfelf deprived of all authority, and even obliged to defert his country, to give place to an ufurper, who would again fubject the Tartars to the yoke of a dominion, from which our beneficence had releafed them, The greater part of them, as blind as they were ignorant, had fubmitted to that ufurper; the reft, thinking themfelves too weak to refift, would infallibly have yielded to his yoke; and thus we fhould have loft the fruits of our victories, and the principal recompence for the facrifices which we willingly made at the laft peace, if we had not inftantly taken under our imme diate protection fuch of the welldifpofed Tartars, who, prizing the bleffings of their new political existence, lamented their being forced to fubmit to the ufurper who had expelled their lawful khan. By thus effectually protecting them, we furnished them with the power and the

means

means of chufing a new khan, in the room of Sahib-Gheray, and of establishing an adminiftration analogous to this ftate of affairs. It was to attain this end that our military forces were put in motion; that a confiderable body of our troops were ordered, notwithfanding the feverity of the feafon, to enter the Crimea, where they were fubfifted at our expence, and obliged to exert the power of our army for the fupport of the good caufe, in order to recall fuch of the Tartars as were estranged from it by their revolt. The public is not ignorant that a rupture between Ruffia and the Ottoman Porte had very near enfued upon this occafion; but, thanks to the Divine afsistance, we difpofed matters in fuch a manner, that the Ottoman Porte again acknowledged the independence of the Tartars, and the validity of the election of Schaghin - Gheray, their lawful fovereign. Notwithftanding all the inconveniencies above-mentioned, as long as we were fuftained and animated by the hope of re-eftablishing the repofe neceffary to the advantage and prefervation of good neighbourhood with the Ottoman empire, we regarded the Crimea according to the tenour and letter of the treaties, as a free and independent country, confining ourfelf folely to appeafing the troubles which prevailed amongst them; from our love of peace we found in this conduct a fufficient recompence for the great expences incurred by it; but we were foon undeceived in this refpect by the freth revolt occafioned in the Crimea laft year,

the encouragement of which always flowed from the fame fource. We have been obliged in confequence to have recourfe again to confiderable armaments, and to caufe troops to enter into the Cri mea and the Cuban, whose prefence is become indifpenfible for maintaining tranquillity and good order in the adjacent countries. The fad experience of every day demonftrates more clearly, that if the fovereignty of the Ottoman Porte in the Crimea was a perpetual fource of difcord between our two empires, the independence of the Tartars expofe us to fubjects of contention no lefs numerous and important, fince the long fervitude to which that people have been accustomed, has rendered the greater part of the individuals incapable of valuing the advantages of the new fituation procured for them by that independence of which we fought to give them the enjoyment; and which, laying us under the neceffity of being always armed, occafions not only great expences, but alfo expofes our troops to ine vitable and continual fatigues.

The efforts they made to extinguifh the flame of difcord, in fuccouring the well-intentioned of that nation, expofed them to the violences of the feditious' and illintentioned, whom we were wil, ling to leave unpunished, in order to avoid even the fhadow of an act of fovereignty, fo long as we could cherish the leaft hope of at length reftoring good order, and preventing by this means the effential interests of our empire from being injured.

But to our great regret all thefe meafures, dictated folely by our

love of humanity, tended only to bring upon us loffes and damages, which we have the more fenfibly at heart, as they affected our fubjects. The lofs in men is not to be appreciated; we will not attempt to eftimate it; that in money, according to the moft moderate calculations, amounts to upwards of twelve millions of roubles. To thefe particulars is to be added another of the utmost importance, both in its object and with regard to its confequences: we have just been informed, that the Porte has began to lay claim to the exercise of fovereignty in the Tartar dominions, by fending one of their officers, at the head of a detachment of troops, to the island of Taman, who has even proceeded. to caufe the officer to be publicly beheaded, who was fent to him by the khan Schaghin-Gheray,. with a commiffion only to enquire of him what were the motives for his arrival in that island; and what evidently proves the nature of the miffion of this commandant of the troops is, that he made no difficulty in declaring openly to the inhabitants of Taman, that he looked upon them as fubjects of the Porte. This decifive, though unexpected ftep, convincing us of the inutility of the facrifices we had made upon the laft peace, annuls in confequence the engagements we had contracted, with the fole intention of firmly eftablishing the freedom and independence of the Tartars, and fufficiently authorizes us to enter again into the enjoyment of thofe rights which we had lawfully acquired by conqueft; the more fo, as it is the only means remaining

for us to fecure hereafter a folid and permanent peace between the two empires. Animated therefore with a fincere defire of confirming and maintaining the laft peace concluded with the Porte, by preventing the continual difputes which the affairs of the Crimea produced, our duty to ourfelf, and the prefervation of the fecurity of our empire, equally demand our taking the firm refolution to put an end, once for all, to the troubles in the Crimea; and for this purpose we reunite to our empire the peninfula of Crimea, the island of Taman, and all the Cuban, as a juft indemnification for the loffes fuf tained, and the expences we have been obliged to incur in maintaining the peace and welfare of these territories.

In declaring to the inhabitants of thofe countries by the prefent manifefto, that fuch is our Imperial pleasure, we promife them, for us and our fucceffors in the Imperial throne of Rufia, that they fhall be treated upon an equality with our ancient fub. jects; and that, in taking them under our high protection, we will defend against all people their perfons, their eftates, their temples, and the religion they profefs; that they fall enjoy the mot abfolute liberty of confcience, without the leaft reftriction, in the public exercife of their worship and their ceremonies; and that not only the nation in general, but alfo each individual in particular, fhall participate in all the advantages enjoyed by our ancient fubjects. But we alfo expect, from the gratitude of our new fubjects, that,

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