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Mr. Grattan then moved the Declaration of Right; but the power of the English government was too great in the Irish House of Com

mons, and he was voted down. He renewed the motion two years after, in connection with the speech which follows.

SPEECH

OF MR. GRATTAN IN THE IRISH HOUSE OF COMMONS ON MAKING HIS SECOND MOTION FOR A DECLARATION OF IRISH RIGHT, DELIVERED APRIL 16, 1782.

INTRODUCTION.

DURING the two years which had elapsed since the preceding speech, great changes had taken place, both in England and in Ireland, which made the passing of the Declaration certain, if strongly insisted upon by the people. Mr. Grattan, therefore, in moving it a second time, uses not so much the language of argument or persuasion, as of assured triumph. He speaks of it in his first sentence as if already carried.

The object

SPEECH,' &c.

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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 defense. But you have sought

I am now to address a free people. Ages have passed away, and this is the first already se moment in which you could be distincured. guished by that appellation. I have spoken on the subject of your liberty so often, that I have nothing to add, and have only to ad-liberty on her own principles. See the Presbymire 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, and 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 13

of Ireland

with other countries.

terians of Bangor petition for the Catholics of the South! 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 molded the jarring elements of your country into a nation, and have rivaled those great and ancient states whom you were taught to admire, and among whom you are now to be recorded.

In this proceeding you had not the advantages She is no longer a wretched colony, returning which were common to other great Her inferior Comparison thanks to her Governor for his rapine, countries-no monuments, no trophies, advantages. and to her King for his oppression; none of those outward and visible signs of greatnor is she now a fretful, squabblingness, such as inspire mankind, and connect the sectary, perplexing her little wits, and firing her ambition of the age which is coming on with furious statutes with bigotry, sophistry, disabili- the example of that which is going off, and ties, and death, to transmit to posterity insignifi- | forms the descent and concatenation of glory. cance and war. Look to the rest of Europe. No! You have not had any great act recorded Holland lives on the memory of past achieve- among all your misfortunes; nor have you one ments. Sweden has lost her liberty. England public tomb to assemble the crowd, and speak has sullied her great name by an attempt to en- to the living the language of integrity and freeslave her colonies! You are the only people- dom. Your historians did not supply the want you, of the nations in Europe, are now the only of monuments. On the contrary, those narrators people who excite admiration; and in your of your misfortunes who should have felt for your present conduct, you not only exceed the present wrongs, and have punished your oppressors with generation, but you equal the past. I am not oppression's natural scourge, the moral indignaafraid to turn back and look antiquity in the face. tion of history, compromised with public villainy, The Revolution, that great event-whether you and trembled; they recited your violence, they call it ancient or modern, I know not-was tar-suppressed your provocation, and wrote in the nished with bigotry. The great deliverer-for such I must ever call the Prince of Nassauwas blemished by oppression. He assented to

1 This speech and the preceding are from a copy corrected by Mr. Grattan, and published in 1821.

2 William Molyneux, the mathematician and astronomer, was originally bred to the law, and, being deeply interested for his countrymen, he wrote his celebrated work on the rights of the Irish Parliament, the first and ablest work ever produced on the subject. He was born in 1656, and died in 1698. 3 Let her endure forever.

chain that entrammeled 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 favor of Heaven, accomplished her own redemption, and left you nothing to add, and every thing to admire. You want no trophy now-the records of Parliament are the evidence of your glory.

I beg to observe, that the deliverance of Ireland has proceeded from her own right hand

Her deliver

by herself.

I rejoice at it; for, had the great acquisition
of your freedom proceeded from the
ance achieved bounty of England, that great work
would have been defective - would
have been defective both in renown and secu-
rity. It was necessary that the soul of the
country should have been exalted by the act of
her own redemption, and that England should
withdraw her claim by operation of treaty, and
not of mere grace and condescension. A gratu-
itous act of Parliament, however express, would
have been revocable; but the repeal of her
claim, under operation of treaty, is not. In that
case, the Legislature is put in covenant, and
bound by the law of nations, the only law that
can legally bind Parliament. Never did this
country stand so high. England and Ireland
treat ex æquo.
Ireland transmits to the King
her claim of right, and requires of the Parlia-
ment of England the repeal of her claim of
power, which repeal the English Parliament is
to make under the force of a treaty, which de-
pends on the law of nations-a law which can
not be repealed by the Parliament of England.
I rejoice that the people are a party to this
treaty, because they are bound to preserve it.
There is not a man of forty shillings freehold
that is not associated in this our claim of right,
and bound to die in its defense-cities, coun-
ties, associations, Protestants, and Catholics. It
seems as if the people had joined in one great
sacrament. A flame has descended from heav-
en on the intellect of Ireland, and plays round
her head with a concentrated glory.

teer Asso

of subjects and the duty of kings. Let other nations imagine that subjects are made for the Monarch; but we conceive that kings, and Parliaments like kings, are made for the subject. The House of Commons, honorable and right honorable as it may be; the Lords, noble and illustrious as we pronounce them, are not original, but derivative. Session after session they move their periodical orbit about the source of their being-the NATION. Even the King-Majesty-must fulfill her due and tributary course round that great luminary; and, created by its beam and upheld by its attraction, must incline to that light or go out of the system.

opposers of

tion.

Ministers-we mean the ministers who have been dismissed; I rely on the good in- Argument re tentions of the present-former minis-torted on the ters, I say, have put questions to us. the DeclaraWe beg to put questions to them. They desired to know by what authority this nation had acted. This nation desires to know by what authority they acted. By what authority did government enforce the articles of war? By what authority does government establish the post-office? By what authority are our merchants bound by the East India Company's charter? By what authority has Ireland one hundred years been deprived of her export trade? By what authority are her peers deprived of their judicature? By what authority has that judicature been transferred to the peers of Great Britain, and our property, in its last resort, referred to the decision of a non-resident, unauthorized, illegal, and unconstitutional tribunal? Will ministers say it was the authority of the British Parliament ? On what ground, then, do they place the question between the government on one side, and the people on the other? The government, according to their own statement, has been occupied to supersede the lawgiver of the country, and the people to restore him. His Majesty's late ministers thought they had quelled the country when they bought the newspapers, and they represented us as wild men, and our cause as visionary; and they pensioned a set of wretches to abuse both; but we took little account of them or their proceedings, and we waited, and we watched, and we moved, as it were, on our native hills, with the minor

There are some who think, and a few who Defense of declare, that the associations to which then I refer are illegal. Come, then, let us ciations. try the charge. And first, I ask, what were the grievances? An army imposed on us by another country-that army rendered perpetual-the Privy Council of both countries made a part of our Legislature-our Legislature deprived of its originating and propounding poweranother country exercising over us supreme legislative authority-that country disposing of our property by its judgments, and prohibiting our trade by its statutes! These were not grievances, but spoliations; they left you nothing. When you contended against them, you contended for the whole of your condition. When the minis-remains of our parliamentary army, until that ter asks by what right, we refer him to our Maker. We sought our privileges by the right which we have to defend our property against a robber, our life against a murderer, our country against an invader, whether coming with civil or military force, a foreign army, or a foreign Legislature. This is a case that wants no precedent. The revolution wanted no precedent; for such things arrive to reform a course of bad precedents, and, instead of being founded on precedent, become such. The gazing world, whom they came to save, begins by doubt and concludes by worship. Let other nations be deceived by the sophistry of courts-Ireland has studied politics in the lair of oppression; and, taught by suffering, comprehends the right

minority became Ireland! Let those ministers now go home, and congratulate their king on the deliverance of his people. Did you imagine that those little parties, whom, three years ago, you beheld in awkward squads parading the streets, would arrive to such distinction and effect? What was the cause? For it was not the sword of the volunteer, nor his muster, nor his spirit, nor his promptitude to put down accidental disturbance, public discord, nor his own unblamed and distinguished deportment: this was much; but there was more than this. The * Lord North and his associates are here referred to.

The "present" ministers were Lord Rockingham, Lord Shelburne, Mr. Fox, &c., composing the Whig administration, which followed that of Lord North.

That bill must fall, or the Constitution can not stand. That bill was originally limited by this House to two years, and it returned from England without the clause of limitation. What! a bill making the army independent of Parliament, and perpetual? I protested against it then; I have struggled with it since; and I am now come to destroy this great enemy of my country. The perpetual Mutiny Bill must van

of Molyneux was burned—it was not answered, and its flame illumined posterity. This evil paper shall be burned; but burned like a felon, that its execution may be a peace-offering to the people, and that a Declaration of Right may be planted on its guilty ashes. A new Mutiny Bill must be formed, after the manner of England, and a Declaration of Right flaming in its preamble. As to the legislative powers of the Privy Council, I conceive them to be utterly inadmissible, against the Constitution, against the privileges of Parliament, and against the dignity of the realm. Do not imagine such power to be a theoretical evil; it is, in a very high de

upper orders, the property and the abilities of the country, formed with the Volunteer; and the volunteer had sense enough to obey them. This united the Protestant with the Catholic, and the landed proprietor with the people. There was still more than this-there was a continence which confined the corps to limited and legitimate objects. There was a principle which preserved the corps from adultery with French politics. There was a good taste which guard-ish out of the statute book. The excellent tract ed the corps from the affectation of such folly. This, all this, made them bold; for it kept them innocent, it kept them rational. No vulgar rant against England, no mysterious admiration of France, no crime to conceal, no folly to blush for, they were what they professed to be; and that was nothing less than society asserting her liberty according to the frame of the British Constitution-her inheritance to be enjoyed in perpetual connection with the British empire. I do not mean to say that there were not divers violent and unseemly resolutions. The immensity of the means was inseparable from the excess. Such are the great works of nature-such is the sea; but, like the sea, the waste and ex-gree, a practical evil. I have here an inventory cess were lost in the immensity of its blessings, benefits, and advantage; and now, having given a Parliament to the people, the Volunteers will, I doubt not, leave the people to Parliament, and thus close, pacifically and majestically, a great work, which will place them above censure and above panegyric. Those associations, like other institutions, will perish; they will perish with the occasion that gave them being; and the gratitude of their country will write their epitaph:

"This phenomenon, the departed Volunteer, justified by the occasion, with some alloy of public evil, did more public good to Ireland than all her institutions. He restored the liberties of his country; and thus, from his grave, he answers his enemies."

of bills, altered and injured by the interference of the Privy Councils-Money Bills originated by them-Protests by the Crown, in support of those Money Bills-prorogation following those Protests. I have a Mutiny Bill of 1780, altered by the Council and made perpetual—a bill in 1778, where the Council struck out the clause repealing the Test Act-a Militia Bill, where the Council struck out the compulsory clause, requiring the Crown to proceed to form a militia, and left it optional to his majesty's ministers whether there should be a militia in Ireland. I have the Money Bill of 1775, when the Council struck out the clause enabling his majesty to take a part of our troops for general service, and left it to the minister to withdraw the forces Connected by freedom, as well as by allegi- against act of Parliament. I have to state the England and ance, the two nations, Great Britain altered Money Bill of 1771; the altered Money Ireland now and Ireland, form a constitutional con- Bill of 1775; the altered Money Bill of 1780. confederate. federacy as well as an empire. The The day would expire before I could recount Crown is one link, the Constitution another; and, their ill doings. I will never consent to have in my mind, the latter link is the most powerful. men—God knows whom-ecclesiastics, &c., &c.; You can get a king any where; but England is men unknown to the constitution of Parliament, the only country with whom you can get and and only known to the minister who has breathparticipate a free Constitution. This makes En-ed into their nostrils an unconstitutional existgland your natural connection, and her king your natural as well as your legal sovereign. This is a connection, not as Lord Coke has idly said, not as Judge Blackstone has foolishly said, not as other judges have ignorantly said, by conquests; but, as Molyneux has said, and as I now say, by compact-that compact is a free Constitution. Suffer me now to state some ciples of the of the things essential to that free Confederacy. Constitution. They are as follows: The independency of the Irish Parliament-the exclusion of the British Parliament from any authority in this realm-the restoration of the Irish judicature, and the exclusion of that of Great Britain. As to the perpetual Mutiny Bill, it must be more than limited—it must be effaced.

Essential prin

ence-steal to their dark divan, which they call the Council, to do mischief, and make nonsense of bills which their Lordships, the House of Lords, or we, the House of Commons, have thought good and meet for the people. No! These men have no legislative qualifications; they shall have no legislative power. 1st. The repeal of the perpetual Mutiny Bill, and the dependency of the Irish army on the Irish Parliament; 2d. The abolition of the legislative power of the Council; 3d. The abrogation of the claim of England to make law for Ireland; the exclusion of the English House of Peers, and of the English King's Bench from any judicial authority in this realm; the restoration of the Irish Peers to their final judicature; the independency of the Irish Par

liament in its sole and exclusive Legislature one step farther, and proposed to impart the these are my terms.

Mr. Grattan now moved the Declaration of Right, which was carried almost without a dissenting voice; and a bill soon after passed the British Parliament, ratifying the decision by repealing the obnoxious act of George I.

The Parliament of Ireland was at last independent; but the beneficial results, so glowingly depicted by Mr. Grattan, were never realized; all were sacrificed and lost through a spirit of selfishness and faction. The Protestants of Ireland were divided into two parties, the Aristocracy and the Patriots. The former were exclusive, selfish, and arrogant; the latter were eager for reform, but too violent and reckless in the measures they employed to obtain it. The Parliament of Ireland was a borough Parliament, the members of the House of Commons being, in no proper sense, representatives of the people, but put in their places by a comparatively small number of individuals belonging to the higher classes. These classes, while they were among the foremost to demand that "England should not give law to Ireland," were equally determined that the Irish Parliament, in making laws, should do it for the peculiar benefit of the Aristocracy, and the support of their hereditary influence. The Patriots, on the other hand, demanded Parliamentary Reform, and clamored for universal suffrage. To enforce their claims, they assembled a Convention of the Volunteers at Dublin in 1783, with a view to influence, and perhaps overawe the Parliament. Their success would have been certain if they had gone |

privileges they enjoyed to the Roman Catholics, by making them voters. But this the Protestants of neither party were willing to do. The Romanists comprised three quarters of the population; very few of them could read or write; and both parties-the Patriots as well as the Aristocracy-equally shrunk from the experiment of universal suffrage among this class of their fellow-citizens. Under these circumstances, the call for Parliamentary Reform was very faintly echoed by the great body of the people. The Convention of Volunteers had none of that power which they had previously exerted on the question of Parliamentary Independence. A bill was brought into the House of Commons by Mr. Flood for extending the right of suffrage, but it was voted down in the most decisive manner. The bitterest animosities now prevailed, and new subjects of contention arose from time to time. Associations were formed, at a later period, under the name of United Irishmen, designed to promote the cause of liberty. Rash men, in many instances, gained the ascendency; an insurrection was planned, and in part commenced; and measures of great severity were resorted to by the British government to restore order. The more sober part of the community became weary of these contentions, and some began to look to a union with England as the only safeguard of their persons and property. The British ministry had the strongest motives to urge on this measure in order to prevent future troubles; and in the year 1800, to a great extent by the use of bribes, the union was effected, and from this time the Parliament of Ireland became extinct.

INVECTIVE

OF MR. GRATTAN AGAINST MR. FLOOD, DELIVERED OCTOBER 28, 1783.

It has been said by Mr. Flood, that "the pen | have been corrupt; and in the last, seditious; would fall from the hand, and the fetus of the that after an envenomed attack on the persons mind would die unborn," if men had not a privi- and measures of a succession of viceroys, and lege to maintain a right in the Parliament of England to make law for Ireland. The affectation of zeal, and a burst of forced and metaphorical conceits, aided by the arts of the press, gave an alarm which, I hope, was momentary, and which only exposed the artifice of those who were wicked, and the haste of those who were deceived.

But it is not the slander of an evil tongue that can defame me. I maintain my reputation in public and in private life. No man who has not a bad character can ever say that I deceived; no country can call me cheat. But I will suppose such a public character. I will suppose such a man to have existence. I will begin with his character in its political cradle, and I will follow him to the last state of political dissolution.

I will suppose him, in the first stage of his life, to have been intemperate; in the second, to

after much declamation against their illegalities and their profusion, he took office, and became a supporter of government when the profusion of ministers had greatly increased, and their crimes multiplied beyond example; when your money bills were altered without reserve by the Council; when an embargo was laid on your export trade, and a war declared against the liberties of America. At such a critical moment, I will suppose this gentleman to be corrupted by a great sinecure office to muzzle his declamation, to swallow his invectives, to give his assent and vote to the ministers, and to become a supporter of government, its measures, its embargo, and its American war. pose that he was suspected by the government that had bought him, and in consequence thereof, that he thought proper to resort to the acts of a trimmer, the last sad refuge of disappointed am

I will sup

bition; that, with respect to the Constitution of his country, that part, for instance, which regard ed the Mutiny Bill, when a clause of reference was introduced, whereby the articles of war, which were, or hereafter might be, passed in England, should be current in Ireland without the interference of her Parliament-when such a clause was in view, I will suppose this gentleman to have absconded. Again, when the bill was made perpetual, I will suppose him again to have absconded; but a year and a half after the bill had passed, then I will suppose this gentleman to have come forward, and to say that your Constitution had been destroyed by the Perpetual Bill. With regard to that part of the Constitution that relates to the law of Poynings, I will suppose the gentleman to have made many a long, very long disquisition before he took office, but, after he received office, to have been as silent on that subject as before he had been loquacious. That, when money bills, under color of that law, were altered, year after year, as in 1775 and 1776, and when the bills so altered were resumed and passed, I will suppose that gentleman to have absconded or acquiesced, and to have supported the minister who made the alteration; but when he was dismissed from office, and a member introduced a bill to remedy this evil, I will suppose that this gentleman inveighed against the mischief, against the remedy, and against the person of the introducer, who did that duty which he himself for seven years had abandoned. With respect to that part of the Constitution which is connected with the repeal of the 6th of George the First, when the inadequacy of the repeal was debating in the House, I will suppose this gentleman to make no kind of objection; that he never named, at that time, the word renunciation; and that, on the division on that subject, he absconded; but when the office he had lost was given to another man, that he came forward, and exclaimed against the measure; nay, that he went into the public streets to canvass for sedition; that he became a rambling incendiary, and endeavored to excite a mutiny in the Volunteers against an adjustment between Great Britain and Ireland, of liberty and repose, which he had not the virtue to make, and against an administration who had the virtue to free the country without buying the members.

With respect to commerce, I will suppose this gentleman to have supported an embargo which lay on the country for three years, and almost destroyed it; and when an address in 1778, to open her trade, was propounded, to remain silent and inactive. And with respect to that other part of her trade, which regarded the duty on sugar, when the merchants were examined in 1778, on the inadequate protecting duty, when the inadequate duty was voted, when the act was recommitted, when another duty was proposed, when the bill returned with the inadequate duty substituted, when the altered bill was adopted, on every one of those questions I will suppose the gentleman to abscond; but a year and a half after the mischief was done, he out

of office, I will suppose him to come forth, and to tell his country that her trade had been destroyed by an inadequate duty on English sugar, as her Constitution had been ruined by a Perpetual Mutiny Bill! In relation to three fourths of our fellow-subjects, the Catholics, when a bill was introduced to grant them rights of property and religion, I will suppose this gentleman to have come forth to give his negative to their pretensions. In the same manner, I will suppose him to have opposed the institution of the Volunteers, to which we owe so much, and that he went to a meeting in his own county to prevent their establishment; that he himself kept out of their associations; that he was almost the only man in this House that was not in uniform, and that he never was a Volunteer until he ceased to be a placeman, and until he became an incendiary.

With regard to the liberties of America, which were inseparable from ours, I will suppose this gentleman to have been an enemy, decided and unreserved; that he voted against her liberty, and voted, moreover, for an address to send four thousand Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans; that he called these butchers "armed negotiators," and stood with a metaphor in his mouth, and a bribe in his pocket, a champion against the rights of America, the only hope of Ireland, and the only refuge of the liberties of mankind. Thus defective in every relationship, whether to Constitution, commerce, or toleration, I will suppose this man to have added much private improbity to public crimes; that his probity was like his patriotism, and his honor on a level with his oath. He loves to deliver panegyrics on himself. I will interrupt him, and say, "Sir, you are much mistaken if you think that your talents have been as great as your life has been reprehensible. You began your parliamentary career with an acrimony and personality which could have been justified only by a supposition of virtue. After a rank and clamorous opposition you became, on a sudden, silent; you were silent for seven years; you were silent on the greatest questions; and you were silent for money! In 1773, while a negotiation was pending to sell your talents and your turbulence, you absconded from your duty in Parliament; you forsook your law of Poynings; you forsook the questions of economy, and abandoned all the old themes of your former declamation. You were not at that period to be found in the House. You were seen, like a guilty spirit, haunting the lobby of the House of Commons, watching the moment in which the question should be put, that you might vanish. You were descried with a criminal anxiety, retiring from the scenes of your past glory; or you were perceived coasting the upper benches of this House like a bird of prey, with an evil aspect and a sepulchral note, meditating to pounce on its quarry. These ways-they were not the ways of honor-you practiced pending a negotiation which was to end either in your sale or your sedition. The former taking place, you supported the rankest measures

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