frivolous exaction and assumption; the language of triumph and gratitude came across the Irish channel so strangely crossed by democratic menace and denunciation, that it is not fairly to be complained of if the British minister began to conclude that he must find some other way to reduce the torrent to the barriers of civil subjection. He may have erred in judgment, but nearer troubles had already begun to menace, and it was no time for coquetting with an intractable democracy. Such was the outward aspect of appearances.

But making these concessions to the fallibility of human judgment, and these allowances for Mr Pitt; whatever was the principle, a change of policy was adopted. This change was not conformable with Mr Grattan's view of Irish policy, and he rightly directed his efforts against it. It may be asserted that if his policy could have been fairly carried out in its whole extent, the results would have been the best for Ireland, while at the same time, it is open to every doubt as to the possibility of effecting those better purposes. Supposing that with one hand he could have swayed the legislature-it was necessary that with the other he should have calmed the agitated wave of factious commotion, and silenced the noisy, designing, and plotting tongues that kept it alive. He could not, however, be expected to wind and turn with the counsels of those persons who, it must be confessed, thought more of the British empire than of Ireland; and still less could it be presumed that he would consent to be mingled in spirit with the less scrupulous details of the new policy.

In 1790, Mr Grattan was chosen representative of the city of Dublin. In this year, in addition to the changes generally intimated in the foregoing paragraphs, the catholic question is properly said to have had its commencement. As other memoirs may compel us to enter upon this in somewhat more detail, we shall not dwell upon them here. It will suffice to say that Mr Grattan's conduct was, during this interval of his life, which we have thus so slightly glanced through, marked with the same uniform spirit of uncompromising opposition to the policy of which he disapproved, the same strenuous exertion for the welfare of his country, and the same clear separation from the low, frantic, visionary, and spurious patriotism which, as we shall prove was really the origin of all the disasters of the country; neutralizing men like Mr Grattan, and only advancing the interests of venality and unscrupulous ambition.

In the interval occupied by this session, there were many incidents of very considerable interest and importance. We shall have occasion to notice them further on.

In 1797, Mr Grattan, who in the interval had taken the lead of his party in a more ostensible manner than perhaps at any former period, finding the impossiblity of pursuing the same uncompromising line of conduct he had till then preserved, seceded from parliament. His motives have been explained by himself at a later period of his life. "The reason why we seceded was, that we did not approve of the conduct of the united men, and we could not approve of the conduct of the government. We were afraid of encouraging the former by making speeches against the latter, and we thought it better in such a case, as we could support neither, to withdraw from both."

It was a moment of severe contention when the struggle between parties was at its height; and when many of those lesser considerations which in ordinary times govern the actions of men, were forced to be laid aside. The magnitude of the evils apprehended; their underworking, secret and indefinite nature; the certainty of a widely diffused conspiracy; the general emergencies which rendered disaffection more than commonly dangerous, were objects which prescribed means of a decisive and strenuous character. It was no time for standing upon principles, when all principle was ready to be shaken; the constitution owes no justice to an armed and conspiring faction, but the justice of felony and treason. An emergency not fully estimated by the wisest men of Mr Grattan's party, and at the present hour not very precisely allowed for but by a few, gave to the counsels of the British minister their utmost vigour, and an external aspect of desperation; a gathering revolution; an empire divided against itself; a wide spread and powerfully organized conspiracy in full communication with the enemies of England. Such was the aspect of the more enlarged field of vision which presented itself to Mr Pitt. The very fact that one so respected, and generally so rightly appreciated by the best men of every party, as Mr Grattan, having fallen for a moment into suspicion, may help to indicate the real force of the suspicions then entertained. That the suspicion of his having any connexion with the United Irishmen was wholly erroneous, we are fully convinced. Against it we put the whole tenor of an honourable life; the man who freely sacrificed the popularity he loved, sooner than assent to the first pardonable deviation of the volunteers, with whom he was himself bound in common honour and common views, was not the accomplice of the low, enraged, and criminal fanatics who had conspired against the peace and honour of Ireland. Against such a charge, the character and word of one whose mind had no peculiarity more eminent than its truth, is with us enough. It is enough that Mr Grattan denied the imputation.

We do not, however, enter into the opinions of those, who found any portion of Mr Grattan's vindication on their hostile views of the character and conduct of the opposite party. To these a debt of justice is indeed due, and has been rendered difficult by the load of misrepresentation, unparalleled in history which oppresses their memory. Faction has long taken up its position on the graves of the most eminent opponents of Mr Grattan-and the very texture of our political idiom in this country, is perplexed and entangled with calumnious recollections. These men and topics cannot be satisfactorily opened in a slight sketch-we cannot say in a few plain words, what will need so much previous statement and explanation to venture upon. In some of the succeeding memoirs, we shall endeavour to show at some length, that concurrently with the events noticed in this, there was a concealed progress of operations working to the most fatal ends, and embracing by no slow degrees the whole popular mind of the kingdom. That Mr Grattan was ignorant of this, may without any derogation from his real merits be easily believed. To this many causes might contribute along with a disposition to think well of those to whom he had been a chosen leader,--he heard from them the language which expressed his own sentiments, for they whose aim was Revolution, in this

instance as in most others, simply avowed a desire for reform.-But his opponents judged more severely, and as will be hereafter seen, more justly, of what was passing; hence their suspicions cannot wholly be condemned. At this period (and this cannot be too strongly impressed on the reader,) the minds of men were heated by no ordinary party struggle; a strife far different even in its objects from the common contentions of public men had nearly reached the highest pitch of exasperation. It was not, as it now seems to be thought, a merely political strife of encroachment on one side, and patriotism on the other, but a rough trial of strength on the edge of Revolution in England, and of bloody rebellion, heightened by the terror of invasion, in Ireland; the season of concessions, conciliations, and discussions, had wholly passed away, and the courtesies and decorums which smooth the brow of faction, and soften the collisions of human pride, passion, and selfinterest, had disappeared as under such circumstances they ever will. Mr Pitt, who is accused of not having been a friend to Ireland—but who had in reality done all that friendship dared venture in her behalf, was more a friend to England; but had come to the conclusion which he acted on with the rigid and stern determination which was his virtue. This conclusion we have stated, and shall again more largely. Mr Pitt was, however, but imperfectly acquainted with the real state of Ireland; it would carry us too far from our present intent to show that he could not easily have understood it. But lord Clare who was on the field of strife-who held the same rule of policy on the same grounds, but whose fears, jealousies, and passions, as well perhaps as his personal asperities, were more immediately acted upon and enlisted into the struggle-may have acted in a temper more coloured with human gall. find, as men, no fault with this; when men are in duty and wisdom called on to act a rough and an unpopular part, they must be high indeed above the ordinary level of mankind, if their passions do not become engaged. They are menaced, taunted, and misrepresented, by their opponents. They do not appeal to the public; their adversaries do; and in their entire language, there is implied that they are the supporters and victims of a righteous cause, and their silent and stern opponents, the advocates and actors of everything wrong, base, and criminal. Such language, echoed and re-echoed by the popular press, and loaded with exaggerations, falsehoods, and complaints, grow into popular opinion, supported by a long-drawn tissue of denials and assertions: while the real state of the facts is unknown; while cabinets maintain secrecy; and while the temperate and moderate are silent, so much is said, and so much becomes believed, that even the friends and partisans of the unpopular policy become ashamed to support it. Even the humanity of the good is enlisted in misrepresentation. The martyrs to their own folly and want of principle, must be remembered with charity; poetry weaves garlands for their graves; their names become associated with liberty and other virtues, to which they pretended: it would seem profanation to do them strict justice. Their just judges; the wisdom by which they were baffled; the strict justice by which they were condemned, cannot be cleared from the load of misrepresentation under which it has been overlaid, without seeming to strike down the laurels from the monument of the rebel

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or the bloodthirsty fanatic. Had Robespierre been cut off but a stage earlier in his career, and had the French revolution been staid in the outset of its disastrous course, many an atrocious name that sleeps in its infamy would have been deeply blazoned in the scroll of the patriot's memory. Generally, the maintenance of civil order, elicits no imagination, and awakens no enthusiasm: the passions of mankind are all on the side of error and crime; the poet and the rhetorician have ever, and will ever find it easier to be brilliant on the side of human vice and folly, than in the rank of stern and rigid right. Our duty is even justice, and we cannot allow the praise or the defence of Mr Grattan to rest on these quicksands. He must stand on his proper merits, and well he may; and his faults must be excused on true grounds. He was virtually the hero of 1782: he had at that memorable period of Irish history, by great and singular exertions, achieved a constitution for his country; he had, to use his own characteristic language, watched over it in its cradle; he had promoted and fostered its growth; he was doomed to witness its premature decline and death. It was not for him to look with calm impartial statesmanship on the passing away of the splendid structure of his genius and patriotism. It was not for him, with more than the stern virtue of Brutus, to sit in judgment on the child of his better days, and to bid the lictors bind their victim to the stake. His blindness was parental; we might have revered the philosopher, but we should less have loved the man. Mr Grattan's heart was composed of no such rigid material; in him tenderness, devotion, and zeal, were the native elements; he would have died to raise and honour Ireland, but he could not play the stern judge when she stood before the bar of state to be tried on her claim to the very benefits and honours he had himself won for her. It is no impeachment of the wisdom of Mr Grattan, that he of all men looked on with sorrow and indignation, when the project of the Union began to be seriously entertained. Having at this time entered parliament expressly for the purpose of resisting it, we find him in common with several other worthy and able men, in what must now appear to be a false position; that is, pledged by their connexions, or by their opinions, to offer a very violent opposition to measures, which, coolly and impartially seen, must appear to have been imperatively called for by every consideration. One thing must be observed with regret, that their speeches, and those of Mr Grattan among the rest, are deeply intermixed with the particular error we have already described. Error is to be found on either side; but the errors of Mr Grattan, and his friends, are unhappily tinged with the glow of animosity, and barbed with the point of indignant and bitter satire. It was indeed unfortunate that there was ground enough to provoke severity; but the severity was indiscriminately lavished on the men, the measure, and the means. None acquainted with the true history of that period, and taking the whole question in all its bearings into account, will now concur in the sense of the numerous flights of democratic eloquence, which occur in his speeches at this period. Under the influence of the combination of motives and impressions, which we have here endeavoured to expound, it is quite evident that, however erroneously, it

was then not inexcusable if the leaders of the government party did entertain suspicion of Mr Grattan: the position in which he stood to the democratic party was one which, to persons of less firmness, has been ever found to be of a very controlling nature; and, what is not enough noticed, Mr Grattan's strong and not very precisely weighed expressions, were highly favourable to such suspicions. The ornaments of his rhetoric, turned into plain prose and tested by principle, were by no means consistent with his real conduct, and real sentiments. The rebellion which he uniformly deprecated, regretted, and kept aloof from, might have found itself justified in his language often enough. And the opponents with whom he had at the moment to contend, themselves heated by the influence of circumstances, neglected to make the usual allowance for a rhetoric, to which those circumstances lent the unhappy effect of fact and reasoning. In the heat of that fierce contention,—which cannot be correctly appreciated by any one who does not contemplate the disasters which menaced the British Empire, and overturned Europe at the time,-men laid aside ordinary courtesies, and grounds of allowance: the common rules of administration were superseded by urgent necessities; and men acted and felt, as they ever have and will, under the sense of great peril and emergency.

Mr Grattan's reappearance in the house of commons was welcomed by the loud and triumphant gratulation of his party. By his opponents, it was received with anxious apprehension, and a resolution, if possible, to put him down. This was however beyond their power. He was not to be intimidated or repressed, and the emotion of defiance perhaps gave added energy and effect to his conduct. His language was excepted against, and termed treasonable; he repeated it with redoubled force and distinctness. The chancellor of the exchequer attempted to cope with him at his own weapon; he received a memorable lesson, that years had not relaxed or chilled the terrible power under which Mr Flood had been forced to writhe and wither. The collision between Mr Grattan and Mr Corry is yet one of the store anecdotes of conversation,-it is to be met in numerous publications. We shall therefore only state the principal incidents.

Mr Grattan's language had been so strong, that the consequence then usually attendant upon such incidents was generally expected by all present. Mr Grattan himself, on sitting down, observed to general Hutchinson, who sat near him, that he had seen Mr Corry look significantly at colonel Cradock, and expressed his own wish to be prepared with a friend to meet the arrangement thus portended. The Speaker made an effort to interpose his counsel; this, however, was confined to private admonition, and could have scarcely been intended to produce any effect. Mr Grattan observed that he had perceived for some time that a set had been made against him, to pistol him off the question, and that the experiment might as well be tried then as at any other time.

The arrangements were completed without interruption, and the parties proceeded to a field near Ball's Bridge, next morning. It was agreed that they should fire each at his own option. On the first fire. Mr Grattan's ball passed through Mr Corry's coat. The second was