you

will those gentlemen now say, when England reserves both ;.... the primum of her manufactures and of yours? and not only woollen yarn, but linen yarn, hides, &c.? To tell me that this exportation is beneficial to Ireland is to tell me nothing; the question is not about stopping the export, but giving up the regulation, in instances where England retains the power of regula tion, and the act of prohibition. To tell me that this exporta tion is necessary for England is to tell me nothing, but that are material to England, and therefore should have obtained at least equal terms. I own, to assist the manufactures of Great Britain as far as it is not absolutely inconsistent with those of Ireland is to me an object; but still the difference recurs: she is not content with voluntary accommodation on your part, but exacts perpetual export from you in the very article, in which she retains absolute prohibition....no new prohibition....every prohibition beneficial to England was laid before....none in favour of Ireland. Ireland till 1779 was a province, and every province is a victim; your provincial state ceased, but before the provincial regulations were done away, this arrangement establishes a principle uti possidetis, that is, Great Britain shall retain all her advantages, and Ireland shall retain all her disadvantages. But I leave this part of the adjustment where reciprocity is disclaimed in the outset of treaty and the rudiment of manufacture; I come to instances of more striking inequali ty, and first, your situation in the East. You are to give a mo nopoly to the present or any future East-India company during its existence, and to the British nation for ever after. It has been said that the Irishman in this is in the same situation as the Englishman, but there is this difference, the difference between having, and not having the trade; the British parliament has judged it most expedient for Great Britain to carry on her trade to the East, by an exclusive company; the Irish parlia ment is now to determine it most expedient for Ireland to have no trade at all in those parts. This is not a surrender of the political rights of the constitution, but of the natural rights of man....not of the privileges of parliament, but of the rights of nations....not to sail beyond the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan, an awful interdict! Not only European settlements, but neutral countries excluded, and God's providence shut out in the most opulent boundaries of creation: other interdicts go to particular places for local reasons, because they belong to certain European states, but here are neutral regions forbidden, and a path prescribed to the Irishman on open sea. Other interdicts go to a determinate period of time, but here is an eternity of restraint; you are to have no trade at all during the existence of any company, and no free trade to those coun

tries after its expiration; this resembles rather a judgment of God than an act of the legislature, whether you measure it by immensity of space or infinity of duration, and has nothing human about it except its presumption.

What you lose by this surrender, what you forfeit by giving up the possibility of intercourse with so great a proportion of the inhabited globe, I cannot presume to say; but this I can say, that gentlemen have no right to argue from present want of capital against future trade, nor to give up their capacity to trade, because they have not yet brought that capacity into action; still less have they a right to do so without the shadow of compensation, and least of all on the affected compensation which, trifling with your understanding as well as interest, suffers a vessel to go to the West, in its way to the East. I leave this uncompensated surrender....I leave your situation in the East which is blank....I leave your situation in the East which is the surrender of trade itself; and I come to your situation in the West which is a surrender of its freedom. You are to give a monopoly to the British plantations at their own taxes; before, you did so only in certain articles, with a power of selection," and then only as long as you pleased to conform to the condition, and without any stipulation to exclude foreign produce. It may be very proper to exclude foreign produce by your own temporary laws, and at your own free will and option, but now you are to covenant to do so for ever, and thereby you put the trade out of your own power for ever, and you give to the Engligh, West as well as East, an eternal monopoly for their plantation produce in the taxing and regulating of which you have no sort of deliberation or interference, and over which Great Britain has a complete supremacy. Here you will consider the advantage you receive from that monopoly, and judge how far it may be expedient to set up against yourselves that monopoly for ever; there is scarcely an article of the British plantation, that is not out of all proportion dearer than the same article is in any other part of the globe, nor any other article that is not produced elsewhere, for some of which articles you might establish a mart for your manufactures. Portugal, for instance, is capable of being a better market for our drapery, than Great Britain; this enormity of price is aggravated by an enormity of tax, what then is this covenant? to take these articles from the British plantations, and from none others, at the present high rates and taxes, and to take them at all times to come, subject to whatever further rates and taxes the parliament of Great Britain shall enact. Let me ask you, why did you refuse protecting duties to your own people? because they looked like a monopoly; and will you give to the East India merchant, and the West India planter something more? a monopoly where the

monopolist is in some degree the lawgiver. The principle of equal duty or the same restriction is not the shadow of security; to make such a principle applicable, the objects must be equal, but here the objects are not only dissimilar but opposite; the condition of England is great debt and greater capital, great incumbrance, but still greater abilities; the condition of Ireland, little capital, but a small debt, poverty, but exemption from intolerable taxes, Equal burthens will have opposite effects, they will fund the debt of one country and destroy the trade of the other; high duties will take away your resource, which is exemption from them, but will be a fund for Great Britain; thus the colony principle in its extent is dangerous to a very great degree. Suppose Great Britain should raise her colony duties to a still greater degree, to answer the exigency of some 'future war, or to fund her present debt, you must follow, for by this bill you would have no option in foreign trade; you must follow, not because you wanted the tax, but lest your exemption from taxes should give your manufactures any comparative advantage. Irish taxes are to be precautions against the prosperity of Irish manufactures! you must follow, because your taxes here would be no longer measured by the wants of the country or the interest of her commerce, because we should have instituted a false measure of taxation; the wants and the riches of another country, which exceeds you much in wants, but infinitely more in riches. I fear we should have done more, we should have made English jealousy the barometer of Irish taxation. Suppose this country should in any degree establish a direct trade with the British plantations, suppose the apprehensions of the British manufacturers in any degree realized, they may dictate your duties, they may petition the British parliament to raise certain duties, which shall not affect the articles of their intercourse, but may stop yours; or which shall affect the articles of their intercourse a little and annihilate yours; thus they may by one and the same duty rajse a revenue in England, and destroy a rival in Ireland. Camblets are an instance of the former, and every valuable plantation import an instance of the latter; your option in foreign trade had been a restraint on England, or a resource to Ireland, but under this adjustment you give up your foreign trade, and confine yourself to that, which you must not presume to regulate. The exclusion of foreign plantation produce would seem sufficient, for every purpose of power and domination, but to aggravate, and it would seem, to insult, the independent states of North America are most ungraciously brought into this arrangement, as if Ireland were a British colony, or North America continued a part of the British dominion; by the resolutions almost all the produce of North America was to be imported to Ireland, subject to British

duties; the bill is more moderate, and only enumerates certain articles; but what right has Great Britain to interfere in our foreign trade, what right has she to dictate to us on the subject of North America trade? How far this country may be further affected by clogging her plantation trade and surrendering her free trade, I shall not for the present stop more minutely to enquire, but I must stop to protest against one circumstance in this arrangement, which should not accompany any arrangement, which would be fatal to settlement itself, and tear asunder the bands of faith and affection; the circumstance I mean, is the opening of the settlements of the colony trade, and free trade of 1779; this adjustment takes from you the power of chusing the article, so that the whole covenant hangs on the special circumstance, and takes from you your option in the produce of foreign plantations, and even of America. It is a revision in peace of the settlements of war, it is a revocation in peace of the acquisition of war. I here ask by what authority? By what authority is Ireland obliged now to enter into a general account for past acquisitions? Did the petition of the manufacturers desire it? Did the addresses of the last session desire it? Did the minister in this session suggest it? No? I call for authority, whereby we can be justified in waving the benefit of past treaties, and bringing the whole relative situation of this country into question in an arrangement which only professes to settle her channel trade? I conceive the settlements of the last war are sacred; you may make other settlements with the British nation, but you will never make any so beneficial as these are; they were the result of a conjuncture miraculously formed and fortunately seized. The American war was the Irish harvest. From that period, as from the lucky moment of your fate, your commerce, constitution, and mind took form and vigour; and to that period, and to a first and salient principle must they recur for life and renovation. It is therefore I consider those settlements as sacred, and from them I am naturally led to that part of the subject which relates to compensation, the payment which we are to make for the losses which we are to sustain; certainly compensation cannot apply to the free trade supposing it uninvaded; first, because that trade was your right; to pay for the recovery of what you should never have lost, had been to a great degree unjust and derogatory: secondly, because that free trade was established in 1779, and the settlement then closed and cannot be opened now; to do so were to destroy the faith of treaties, to make it idle to enter into the present settlement, and to render it vain to enter into any settlement with the British minister. The same may be said of the colony trade; that too was settled in 1779, on terms then specified, not now to be opened, clogged, conditioned or circumscribed: still less

does compensation apply to the free constitution of 1782. His majesty then informed you from the throne," these things come unaccompanied with any stipulation," besides, the free constitution like the free trade was your right. Free men won't pay for the recovery of right; payment had derogated from the claim of right; so we then stated to ministry. It was then thought that to have annexed subsidy to constitution had been a barren experiment on public poverty, and had married an illustrious experiment on the feelings of the nation, and had been neither satisfaction to Ireland, nor revenue to Great Britain. This bolder policy, this happy art, which saw how much may be got by tax, and how much must be left to honour, which made a bold push for the heart of the nation, and leaving her free to acquire, took a chance for her disposition to give, had its effect; for since that time, until the present most unfortunate attempt, a great bulk of the community were on the side of government, and the parliamentary constitution, was a guarantee for public peace.

See then what you obtained without compensation, a colony trade, a free trade, the independency of your judges, the government of your army, the extension of the unconstitutional powers of your council, the restoration of the judicature of your lords, and the independency of your legislature!

See now what you obtain by compensation....a covenant not to trade beyond the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan; a covenant not to take foreign plantation produce, but as the parliament of Great Britain shall permit; a covenant not to take British plantation produce, but as Great Britain shall prescribe; a covenant to make such acts of navigation as Great Britain shall prescribe; a covenant never to protect your own manufactures, never to guard the primum of those manufactures! These things are accompanied, I do acknowledge, with a covenant on the part of England to disarm your argument for protecting duties, to give the English language in the act of navigation the same construction in Ireland, and to leave our linen markets without molestation or diminution. One should think some God presided over the liberties of this country, who made it frugality in the Irish nation to continue free, but has annexed the penalties of fine or infamy to the surrender of the constitution! From this consideration of commerce, a question much more high, much more deep, the invaluable question of constitution arises, in which the idea of protecting duties, the idea of reciprocal duties, of countervailing duties, and all that detail vanish, and the energies of every heart, and the prudence of every head, are called upon to shield this nation, that long depressed, and at length by domestic virtues, and foreign misfortune emancipated, has now to defend her newly acquired rights, and her justly acquired reputation: the question is no