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are at the head of an immense army; nor do we only possess an unconquerable force, but a certain unquenchable public fire, which has touched all ranks of men like a visitation.

** Turn to the growth and spring of your country, and behold and admire it; where do you find a nation who, upon whatever concerns the rights of mankind, expresses herself with more truth or force, perspicuity or justice? not the set phrase of scholastic men, not the tame unreality of court-addresses, not the vulgar raving of a rabble, but the genuine speech of liberty, and the unsophisticated oratory of a free nation.

“ See her military ardour, expressed not only in 40,000 men, conducted by instinct as they were raised by inspiration, but manifested in the zeal and promptitude of every young member of the growing community. Let corruption tremble; let the enemy, foreign or domestic, tremble; but let the friends of liberty rejoice at these means of safety and this hour of redemption. Yes; there does exist an enlightened sense of rights, a young appetite for freedom, a solid strength, and a rapid fire, which not only put a declaration of right within your power, but put it out of your power to decline one. Eighteen counties are at your bar; they stand there with the compact of Henry, with the charter of John, and with all the passions of the people. Our lives are at your service, but our liberties, we received them from God; we will not resign them to man.

The peroration of this exquisite piece of oratory is singularly powerful :

“ There is no policy left for Great Britain but to cherish the remains of her empire, and do justice to a country who is determined to do justice to herself, certain that she gives nothing equal to what she received from us when we gave her Ireland.

"With regard to this country, England must resort to the free principles of government, and must forget that legislative power which she has exercised to do mischief to herself; she must go back to freedom, which, as it is the foundation of her constitution, so is it the main pillar of her empire; it is not merely the connexion of the crown, it is a constitutional annexation, an alliance of liberty, which is the true meaning and mystery of the sisterhood, and will make both countries one arm and one soul, replenishing from time to time, in their immortal connexion, the vital spirit of law and liberty from the lamp of each other's light; thus combined by the ties of common interest, equal trade and equal liberty, the constitution of both countries may become immortal, a new and milder empire may arise from the errors of the old, and the British nation assume once more her natural station—the head of mankind.

“ That there are precedents against us 1 allow—acts of power I would call them, not precedents; and I answer the English pleading such precedents, as they answered their kings when they urged precedents against the liberty of England, such things are the weakness of the times; the tyranny of one side, the feebleness of the other, the law of neither; we will not be bound by them; or rather, in the words of the declaration of right, “no doing judgment, proceeding, or any wise to the contrary, shall be brought into precedent or example. Do not then tolerate a power-the power of the British parliament over this land, which has no foundation in utility or necessity, or empire, or the laws of England, or the laws of Ireland, or the laws of nature, or the laws of God,—do not suffer it to have a duration in your mind.

“ Do not tolerate that power which blasted you for a century, that power which shattered your loom, banished your manufactures, dishonoured your peerage, and stopped the growth of your people; do not, I say, be bribed by an export of woollen, or an import of sugar, and permit that power which has thus withered the land to remain in your country and have existence in your pusillanimity.

“ Do not suffer the arrogance of England to imagine a surviving hope in the fears of Ireland; do not send the people to their own resolves for liberty, passing by the tribunals of justice and the high court of parliament; neither imagine that, by any formation of apology, you can palliate such a commission to your hearts, still less to your children, who will sting you with their curses in your grave for having interposed between them and their Maker, robbing them of an immense occasion, and losing an opportunity which you did not create, and can never restore.

“ Hereafter, when these things shall be history, your age of thraldom and poverty, Vol. I. No. 3.-Museum.

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your sudden resurrection, commercial redress, and miraculous armament, shall the historian stop at liberty, and observe, that here the principal men among us feli into mimic trances of gratitude,-they were awed by a weak ministry, and bribed by an empty treasury,-and when liberty was within their grasp, and the temple opened her folding doors, and the arms of the people clanged, and the zeal of the nation urged and encouraged them on, that they fell down, and were prostituted at the threshold.

"I might, as a constituent, come to your bar, and demand my liberty. I do call upon you, by the laws of the land and their violation, by the instruction of eighteen counties, by the arms, inspiration, and providence of the present moment, tell us the rule by which we shall go,-assert the law of Ireland,—declare the liberty of the land.

"I will not be answered by a public lie, in the shape of an amendment; neither, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe, in this our island, in common with my fellow subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, unless it be the ambition to break your chain, and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking to his rags: he may be naked, he shall not be in iron; and I do see the time is at hand, the spirit is gone forth, the declaration is planted; and though great men should apostatize, yet the cause will live; and though the public speaker should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ which conveyed it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, will not die with the prophet but survive him."

The great Irish patriots of that day had indeed undertaken an arduous enterprise. They did not however faint by the way-side, but proceeded with temper and with firmness. While Mr. Grattan was attacking the supremacy of the British parliament, Mr. Flood and Mr. Yelverton (afterward Lord Avonmore) attacked the law of Poynings; Mr. Gervase Bushe assailed the perpetual Mutiny Bill; and Mr. Gardiner and Sir Hercules Langrishe opposed the Penal Code. The plans of the political campaign were laid at Charlemont-House.

Ireland is chiefly indebted, however, to her Volunteers for the celebrated revolution of 1782, though various other causes had their share in it; such as the losses of Great Britain in America, and the irresolution, weakness, and subsequent dissolution of Lord North's administration, which hastened it onwards. The Fox-party then came into power, and, as the first act of the new ministry, the Duke of Portland was sent to Ireland: when, by way of amendment to the address, Mr. Grattan moved a declaration of right, which was unanimously carried. The exordium of his speech on that occasion is so affectingly solemn, that we cannot abstain from extracting it. It is not, indeed, secure from criticism, for the characteristic habits of Mr. Grattan's style frequently appear in it:-but who can stop to make petty exceptions to a rapid and impetuous eloquence, pronounced on one of the most awful and interesting subjects that can affect the dignity, the happiness, or the destiny of man?

"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 had 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 mis. fortunes, 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 oppression's 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.”

We could have wished that no memorial existed of the memorable dispute between Mr. Grattan and Mr. Flood, on the subject of the Repeal of the Declaratory Act. The controversy was, in fact, merely verbal : but the invective of Mr. Grattan, though not unprovoked, was unmeasured in satire, poignancy, and bitterness. The disputants were in after-life reconciled; and it is to be lamented that even a transient cloud lowered over two eminent men, engaged in the sacred cause of their country's deliverance.

It is by his exertions in behalf of the Irish Catholics, that Mr. Grattan has formed the most lasting monument of his greatness.. Never was perseverance in effecting a great object of policy and justice more steadily, and, we may add, more beautifully exhibited. The great law of Christian tolerance and religious charity seemed the inexorable rule of Mr. Grattan's political life: but it is disgraceful to an age abounding in the mature fruits of literature and philosophy, to state that, down to 1782, the Catholics had no rights of property and education. The bill which enabled them to acquire lands by purchase, grant, descent, devise, &c., restored them to the free exercise of their religion, secured them from the confiscation of their houses and property, and removed their disabilities as to education, was first carried (without a division) in that year.

Thus slowly do the vain prejudices of man fade before the increasing

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lights of reason and humanity-but the progress of better opinions, though tardy and impeded, is at length mighty and irresistible. In the present state of enlightened feeling, it will be difficult to believe (what is strictly true) that, when the Catholic question was first introduced into the Irish House, Mr. Grattan and Mr. Dennis Browne, who supported it, could scarcely obtain a hearing. The petition of the Catholic body was even ignominiously rejected, and it is said that Sir Henry Harstonge actually carried it down to the bar, and kicked it out of the House. These difficulties, however, were as resting places only to the victorious progress of Mr. Grattan's exertions. It was his uniform opinion,-almost a part of the constitutional frame of his mind, -that the fate of Ireland as an independent nation hung on that decision ; and that the constitution could not be upheld unless all classes and ranks were interested in its conservation.—His labours were not consecrated only by the justice of his cause :-he succeeded in his pious struggle for the rights of religion and humanity. Concessions to the Catholics went pari passu with the free trade and independence of the country; and never was political prophecy so literally verified as his celebrated exclamation, frequently remembered since it was uttered, -“ The day you reject the Catholic question, that day you vote the Union."

In the Imperial parliament, he repeatedly introduced that question, and on one occasion nearly triumphed in carrying it. He spoke also on other topics of moment:—the Orders in Council; the Walcheren expedition ; Irish tithes; the Irish Convention-act; and the war with Bonaparte in 1815; and at these times he was heard with the most respectful attention. Indeed, his venerable age, his long life consecrated to the advantage and happiness of his country, and the eminence which he had so early acquired and so long retained, could not but secure to him from the urbanity of the first assembly in the world a silent and patient audience :—but the peculiar character of his eloquence suffered much in being transplanted from its kindred soil, where it had been nurtured by local associations which now had no existence. Its habitual warmth, its tone of high moral indignation and virtuous contempt, which struck so forcibly on the chords of national sympathy, when he hurled his invectives against those venal and corrupt parasites of the Castle by whom Ireland was blighted as by locusts, had no longer the same exciting causes to call them into play. Of a settled country, secure in its recognised privileges, and having rather to defend those privileges than to struggle for their acquisition, the popular eloquence is principally of a sedater and more subdued description; and principles being too thoroughly established to be called into doubt, or exposed to jeopardy, the usual controversies turn on questions which chiefly require accuracy of detail and justness of reasoning. Hence it was that, in the English House of Commons, the strong and vehement though frequently disjointed and abrupt sententiousness of Mr. Grattan had little effect, beyond that of rareness and singularity.

It is remarkable that Mr. Grattan was at variance with many of the "hig-party in parliament, on the question of a war with Bonaparte

the violation of the treaty of Elba ; and it is also to be observed
ne of the most powerful orators of modern times, his friend and
yman, Mr. Plunket, was fighting by his side on that important oc-

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casion. Having stated the real question to be whether we should go to war when our allies were assembled, or when they should be dispersed, Mr. Grattan thus proceeded in his speech:

“Sir, the French government is war; it is a stratocracy, elective, aggressive, and predatory ; her armies live to fight, and fight to live; their constitution is essentially war, and the object of that war, the conquest of Europe. What such a person as Bonaparte at the head of such a constitution will do, you may judge by whai he has done ; and, first, he took possession of the greater part of Europe; he made his son King of Rome; he made his son-in-law Viceroy of Italy; he made his brother King of Holland; he made his brother-in-law King of Naples; he imprisoned the King of Spain; he banished the Regent of Portugal, and formed his plan to take possession of the crown of England, England bad checked his designs; her trident had stirred up his empire from its foundation; he complained of her tyranny at sea; but it was her power at sea which arrested his tyranny at land; the navy of England saved Europe. Knowing this, he knew the conquest of England became necessary for the accomplishment of the conquest of Europe, and the destruction of her marine necessary for the conquest of England. Accordingly, besides raising an army of 60,000 men for the invasion of England, he applied himself to the de. struction of her commerce, the foundation of her naval power. In pursuit of this object, and on his plan of a western empire, he conceived, and in part executed, the design of consigning to plunder and destruction the vast regions of Russia; he quits the genial clime of the temperate zone; he bursts through the narrow limits of an immense empire; he abandons comfort and security, and he hurries to the pole, to hazard them all, and with them the companions of his victories, and the fame and fruits of his crimes and his talents, on a speculation of leaving in Europe, throughout the whole of its extent, no one free or independent nation: to oppose this huge conception of mischief and despotism, the great potentate of the north from his gloomy recesses advances to defend, against the voracity of ambition, the sterility of his empire. Ambition is omnivorous, it feasts on famine and sheds tons of blood, that it may starve in ice, in order to commit a robbery on desolation. The power of the north, I say, joins another prince, whom Bonaparte had deprived of almost the whole of his authority, the King of Prussia ; and then another potentate, whom Bonaparte had deprived of a principal part of his dominions, the Emperor of Austria. These three powers, physical causes, final justice, the influence of your victories in Spain and Portugal, and the spirit given to Europe by the achievements and renown of your great commander,* together with the precipitation of his own ambition, combine to accomplish his destruction. Bonaparte is conquered; he who said, “I will be like the Most High;' he who smote the nations with a continual stroke; this short-lived son of the morning, Lucifer, falls, and the earth is at rest; the phantom of royalty passes on to nothing, and the three kings to the gates of Paris; there they stand, the late victims of his ambition, and now the disposers of his destiny, and the masters of his empire ; without provocation he had gone to their countries with fire and sword; with the greatest provocation they come to his country with life and liberty; they do an act unparalleled in the annals of history, such as nor envy, nor time, nor malice, nor prejudice, nor ingratitude can efface; they give to his subjects liberty, and to himself life and royalty. This is greater than conquest! The present race must confess their virtues, and ages to come must crown their monuments, and place them above heroes and kings in glory everlasting

“ When Bonaparte states that the conditions of the treaty of Fontainbleau are not performed, he forgets one of them, namely, the condition by which he lives. It is very true there was a mixture of policy and prudence in this measure; but it was a great act of magnanimity notwithstanding, and it is not in Providence to turn such an act to your disadvantage. With respect to the other act, the mercy shown to his people, I have underrated it: the allies did not give liberty to France, they enabled her to give a constitution to herself, a better constitution than that which, with much laboriousness, and circumspection, and deliberation, and procrastination, the philosopher fabricated, when the Jacobins trampled down the flimsy work, murdered the vain philosophers, drove out the crazy reformers, and remained masters of the field in the triumph of superior anarchy and confusion; better than that, I say, which the Jacobin destroyed, better than that which he afterwards formed,

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