prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss!" Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land? Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? Let as not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings

resort.

I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and to rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer on the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free; if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending; if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained-we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms, and to the God of Hosts, is all that is left us!

with so

They tell us, sir, that we are weak-"unable to cope formidable an adversary!" But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just Power who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable, and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come! It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry "Peace, peace!" but there is no peace! The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty Powers! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

XIV-CONTEST BETWEEN MR. FLOOD AND MR. GRATTAN.

[Mr. Grattan having made some strong personal allusions to Mr. Flood, accusing him particularly of having affected indisposition, and of being guilty of apostasy; Mr. Flood rose and replied in these words:-] "THE right honourable member can have no doubt of the propriety of my saying a word in reply to what he has delivered. Every member of the House can bear witness of the infirmity I mentioned, and therefore it required but little candour to make a nocturnal attack upon that infirmity. But

I am not afraid of the right honourable member: I will meet him anywhere, or upon any ground, by night or by day. I should stand poorly in my own estimation and in my country's opinion, if I did not stand far above him. I do not come here, dressed in a rich wardrobe of words, to delude the people. I am not one who has promised repeatedly to bring in a Bill of Rights, yet does not bring in that bill, or permit any other person to do it. I am not one who threatened to impeach the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and afterwards shrunk from the charge. I am not one who would come at midnight, and attempt a vote of this House to stifle the people, whom my egregious folly had raised against me. I am not the gentleman who subsists upon your accounts. I am not the mendicant patriot who was bought by his country for a sum of money, and then sold his country for prompt payment. I never was bought by the people, and never sold them. The gentleman says he never apostatized; but I say I never changed my principles. Let every man say the same, and let the people believe it-if they can.

"I have now done, and give me leave to say, if the gentleman enters often into this kind of colloquy with me, he will not have much to boast of at the end of the session."

Mr. Grattan.- "In respect to the House, I could wish to avoid personality, but I must request liberty to explain some circumstances alluded to by the honourable member." [After making this explanation, he proceeded.] "It is not the slander of the bad tongue of a bad character that can defame me. I maintain my reputation in public and in private life; no man who has not a bad character can say I ever deceived him; no country has called me cheat. I will suppose a public character--a man not of course in the House, but who formerly might have been here. I will suppose, it was his constant practice to abuse every man who differed from him, and to betray every man who trusted him. I will suppose him active; I will begin from his cradle, and divide his life into three stages. In the first, he was intemperate; in the second, corrupt; and in the third, seditious. Suppose him & great egotist-his honour equal to his oath; and I will stop him, and say, 'Sir, your talents are not so great as your life is infamous; you were silent for years, and you were silent for money when affairs of consequence to the nation were debating, you might be seen passing by these doors like a guilty spirit-just waiting for the moment of putting the question, that you might pop in and give your venal vote; or

you might be seen hovering over the dome,like an ill-omened bird of night, with sepulchral notes, with cadaverous aspect, and broken beak, ready to stoop and pounce upon your prey. You can be trusted by no man: the people cannot trust you, the ministers cannot trust you--you deal out the most impartial treachery to both; you tell the nation it is ruined by other men, when it is sold by yourself; you fled from the Embargo Bill; you fled from the Mutiny Bill; you fled from the Sugar Bill. I therefore tell you, in the face of your country, before all the world, and to your very beard, you are not an honest

man." "

Mr. Flood. "I have heard very extraordinary language indeed, and I challenge any man to say that anything half so unwarrantable was ever uttered in this House. The right honourable gentleman set out with declaring he did not wish to use personality; and no sooner had he opened his mouth, than forth issues all the venom that ingenuity and disappointed vanity, for two years brooding over corruption, have been able to produce. But taint my public character it cannot; four-andtwenty years employed in your service have established that: and as to my private, let that be learned from my friends, from those under my own roof. To these I appeal; and this appeal I boldly make, with an utter contempt of insinuations, false as they are illiberal.

XV.-MR. GRATTAN, IN REPLY TO MR. CORRY.

HAs the gentleman done? Has he completely done? He was unparliamentary from the beginning to the end of his speech. There was scarcely a word he uttered that was not a violation of the privileges of the House; but I did not call him to order-Why? because the limited talents of some men render it impossible for them to be severe without being unparliamentary. But, before I sit down, I shall show him how to be severe, and parliamentary, at the same time. On any other occasion I should think myself justifiable in treating with silent contempt anything which might fall from that honourable member; but there are times when the insignificance of the accuser is lost in the magnitude of the accusation. I know the difficulty the honourable gentleman laboured under when he attacked me; conscious that, on a comparative view of our characters, public and private, there is nothing he could say which would injure me. The public would not believe the charge; I despise the falsehood. If such a charge were made

by an honest man, I would answer it in the manner I shall do before I sit down. But I shall first reply to it when not made by an honest man.

The right honourable gentleman has called me "an unimpeached traitor." I ask, why not "traitor," unqualified by any epithet? I will tell him; it was because he dared not. It was the act of a coward, who raises his arm to strike, but has not courage to give the blow. I will not call him villain, because it would be unparliamentary, and he is a privy councillor. I will not call him fool, because he happens to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. But I say he is one who has abused the privilege of parliament and freedom of debate, by uttering language, which, if spoken out of the House, I should answer only with a blow. I care not how high his situation, how low his character, how contemptible his speech; whether a privy councillor, or a parasite, my answer would be a blow.

The right honourable member has told me, I deserted a profession where wealth and station were the reward of industry and talent. If I mistake not, that gentleman endeavoured to obtain those rewards by the same means; but he soon deserted the occupation of a barrister for that of a parasite and a pander. He fled from the labour of study, to flatter at the table of the great. He found the lord's parlour a better sphere for his exertions than the hall of the Four Courts; the house of a great man a more convenient way to power and to place; and that it was easier for a statesman of middling talents to sell his friends, than a lawyer of no talents to sell his clients.

For myself, whatever corporate or other bodies have said or done to me, I from the bottom of my heart forgive them. I feel I have done too much for my country to be vexed at them. I would rather that they should not feel or acknowledge what I have done for them, and call me traitor, than have reason to say I sold them. I will always defend myself against the assassin; but with large bodies it is different. To the people I shall bow: they may be my enemy-I never will be theirs.

The right honourable gentleman says I fled from the country after exciting one rebellion, and that I have returned to raise another. No such thing. The charge is false. The civil war had not commenced when I left the kingdom; and I could not have returned without taking a part. On the one side, there was the camp of the rebel; on the other, the camp of the minister-a greater traitor than that rebel. The stronghold of the constitution was no-where to be found. I agree