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Jennings Clerke, for disabling revenue officers from BOOK voting at elections, and excluding contractors from the house of commons. These now passed with approbation and applause; Mr. Secretary Fox declaring, that not an hour should be lost in giving the public the strongest proofs that his majesty's ministers were sincerely determined to make such reforms as should be necessary, and to enforce that system of government which they had repeatedly called for when not in place. He said his worst suspicions of the negligence and scandalous mismanagement of the late ministers were now matured into knowledge; that, bad as things had been described, the representation was by no means so bad as the reality. And he should not think that the present ministers acted fairly or honestly by that house, or by the people at large, if they did not institute inquiries which might give the country a true and correct idea of the present situation of affairs.

These bills were vehemently, though ineffectually, opposed in the house of peers by the lord-chancellor, who seemed to hang as a dead weight on the measures of the present administration, whose sentiments could never assimilate with those of men of liberal and comprehensive views, and who now appeared as the avowed and determined enemy of every species of civil or political reform. The attention

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BOOK of parliament was however soon occupied by affairs of much higher moment.

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In the month of November last, Mr. Grattan, a distinguished member of the Irish parliament, had moved for a limitation of the perpetual Mutiny Bill. This was rejected by a great majority, extremely to the dissatisfaction of the people of that kingdom.

At a subsequent meeting of the representatives of one hundred and forty-three corps of volunteers assembled at Dungannon, RESOLUTIONS passed, DECLARATORY of the RIGHTS of IRELAND, and in express terms asserting, "that the claim of any body of men, other than the KING, LORDS, and COMMONS of IRELAND, to make laws to bind that kingdom, was unconstitutional and illegal, and a grievance of which it was their decided and unalterable determination to seek the speedy and effectual redress. They knew," they said, "their duty to their sovereign, and were disposed to be loyal; but they knew also what they owed to themselves, and were RESOLVED TO BE FREE."

High and In a very short time after these resolves passed, peremptory Mr. Grattan moved the house for an address to his

claims of the Irish

same principles.

parliament, majesty," consonant with, and founded upon, the This motion, after a long and warm debate, was also rejected. of April, 1782, he again moved of Rights, under the form of an

But, on the 16th "a Declaration address to the

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throne." In his speech on this occasion, he pro- BOOK nounced an animated panegyric on the volunteers, and the late conduct of the Irish nation-"He beheld," he said, "with joy and admiration, her progress from injuries to arms, from arms to liberty. The Irish volunteers had supported the rights of the Irish parliament against those temporizing trustees who would have relinquished them. Allied by liberty still more than by allegiance, Great Britain and Ireland formed a constitutional confederacy. The perpetual annexation of the two crowns was a powerful bond of union, but Magna Charta was more efficacious still. It would be easy any where to find a king, but to England only can we look for a constitution. Ireland was planted by Britons, and was entitled to British privileges. It was by charter, and not by conquest, as had been falsely asserted, that the mutual connexion of the two countries was originally established. Every true Irishman would say, Liberty with England, if England is so disposed; but at all events LIBERTY. The Irish nation were too high in pride, character, and power, to suffer any other nation to claim a right to make their laws. Was England ready to acknowledge the independency of America, and would she refuse liberty to Ireland? If she was capable, after enabling his majesty to repeal the Declaratory Act against America, of wishing to retain that against Ireland, the Irish nation was not capable of

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BOOK submitting to it." Such was the spirit which now XXI. pervaded the kingdom, and such the resistless enthusiasm excited by the eloquence of Mr. Grattan, that the address was voted without a dissentient voice; and, being unanimously acceded to by the peers, was immediately transmitted to the king. In this famous address the two houses affirm, "That the crown of Ireland is an imperial crown, inseparably annexed to the crown of Great Britain, on which connexion the interest and happiness of both countries essentially depend: but that the kingdom of Ireland is a distinct kingdom, with a parliament of her own, the sole legislature thereof. In this right they conceived the very essence of their liberty to exist. It was a right which they, in behalf of all the people of Ireland, claimed as their birth-right, and which they could not yield but with their lives." They declared, "that they considered the claims of the parliament of Great Britain, in the act passed for better securing the dependency of Ireland, to be reconcileable to the fundamental rights of that nation." They added, "that they had a high veneration for the British character, and the people of Ireland did not desire to share the freedom of England, without likewise sharing her fate;--and it was their determination to stand or fall with the British nation.”

Happy indeed was it that a radical change of counsels had taken place in Britain before these high

6

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and peremptory, though just and equitable, claims BOOK were preferred on the part of Ireland; for the folly, obstinacy, and pride, of the late ministers would scarcely have scrupled to involve the empire in a second civil war, rather than have conceded in points which militated so strongly against what they would undoubtedly have styled "the honor and dignity of the crown, and the essential interests of the people."

the Irish

act.

Some days previous to the motion of Mr. Grattan, a royal message was delivered to the house of commons by the secretary of state, "recommending to their most serious consideration the state of affairs in Ireland, in order to such a final adjustment as may give a mutual satisfaction to both kingdoms." And Repeal of on the 18th of May, Mr. Fox, at the close of a long declaratory and able speech, moved for the repeal of the obnoxious act for securing the dependency of Ireland; which he called "a measure of necessity, resulting, however unpleasant it might be to some, from the conduct of the late ministry, who had awakened the present spirit in Ireland, by refusing their most modest and reasonable requests. With that generosity and openness of sentiment by which this eminent statesman has been so long and so remarkably distinguished, Mr. Fox observed nevertheless "that his own decided opinion had always been, that Ireland, being a part of the British empire, was entitled

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