between Mr. Grattan and Mr. Flood in the Irish Parliament on the question of simple repeal. We have always considered that question to be a mere controversy of words. Whether the claim of England to a legislative supremacy over Ireland, was extinguished by an act of repeal or by a course of treaty, (which, in point of fact, was the case,) was a matter unworthy of the stormy and tempestuous debates which it excited. Such language as that in which Mr. Grattan conveyed his acrimonious. attack, ought not to have been tolerated in a legislative assembly.

Thus defective in every relationship, whether to constitution, commerce, or toleration, I will suppose this gentleman to have added much private improbity to public crimes-that his probity was like his patriotism, and his honour 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 seven years; you were silent on the greatest questions; and you were silent for money! In 1773, when a negotiation was pending to sell your talents and your turbulence, you absconded from your duty in parliament, you forsook your law of Poy. nings, and all the old themes of your former declamation. You were not then to be found in the House. You were seen, like a guilty spirit, haunting the lobby, watching the moment in which the question should be put, that you might vanish;-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 honour) you practised pending a negotiation which was to end either in your sale or your sedition.'

Such has been your conduct; and at such conduct every order of your fellow citizens have a right to exclaim! The merchant may say to you the constitutionalist may say to you-and I, I now say, and say to your beard, Sir,-you are not an honest man.'

The result of this invective may be imagined. The Speaker issued his warrant, and the parties were bound over.

Mr. Grattan's exertions in behalf of the Irish Catholics éxceed all praise.. Never was perseverance in effectuating a great object of public policy, more steadily, and we may add, more beautifully exhibited. The great law of Christian charity was the inexorable rule of his political life. It reflects, however, shame upon an age abounding with the lights of literature and philosophy, that down to 1782, the Catholics were deprived of the rights of property and education. The bill by which they were

enabled to acquire lands by purchase, grant, descent, devise, or otherwise, by which they were restored to the free exercise of their religion, by which their houses and private property were secured from confiscation, and their disabilities as to education removed,-was carried without a division in that year.

It awakens a train of reflections serving to show how impregnable are human prejudices to the reasoning faculties, and how strong a hold they take even on minds the most highly gifted, but illustrates at the same time the sure and irresistible, though tardy and impeded progress of better opinions, to recur to the period when the Catholic question was first introduced into the Irish House. Upon that occasion, Mr. Grattan and Mr. Denis Browne, who supported it, could scarcely obtain a hearing. The petition of the Catholic body was even ignominiously rejected; and it is said that a Sir Henry Harstonge actually carried it down to the bar and kicked it out of the house. But these difficulties were as resting-places only to the victorious progress of Mr. Grattan's exertions. It was his uniform opinion, that the fate of Ireland as an independent nation, hung on that decision, and that the constitution could not be upheld, unless all classes and ranks were interested in its conservation. Nor were the labours of Mr. Grattan consecrated only by the justice of his cause. He succeeded in his philanthropic struggle for the rights of religion and humanity. Concessions to the Catholics went pari passû with the free trade and independence of the country; and never was political prophecy so literally verified as his celebrated exclamation, so frequently remembered since it was uttered, The day you reject the Catholic question, that day you vote the Union.'

In the Imperial Parliament, he repeatedly introduced that question, and on one occasion, nearly succeeded in carrying it. He spoke also of other questions of moment, the Orders in Council, the Walcheren Expedition, Irish Tithes, the Irish Convention-act, and the war with Buonaparte in 1815. Mr. Grattan at these times was heard with the most respectful attention. His venerable age, his long life consecrated to the advantage and happiness of his country, and the eminence he had so early acquired and so long retained, secured to him from the urbanity of the first assembly in the world, a silent and patient audience. But the peculiar character of Mr. Grattan's eloquence suffered much in being transplanted from its native soil. It had been nurtured by local associations which no longer existed. Its habitual warmth, its tone of high moral indignation and virtuous contempt, which struck so forcibly on the chords of national sympathy, when he hurled his invectives against those venal and corrupt parasites of the Castle, by whom Ire

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land was blighted as by locusts,-had no longer the same exciting causes to call them into play. Of a settled country, secure in its recognized privileges, and having to defend those privileges rather than to struggle for their acquisition, the pular eloquence is for the most part of a sedater and more subdued description. Principles being too securely established to be called into doubt or exposed to jeopardy, the usual controversies turn upon questions which chiefly require accuracy of detail and justness of reasoning. Hence it was, that in the English House of Commons, the strong and vehement, though frequently disjointed and abrupt sententiousness of Mr. Grattan, had little effect beyond that of rareness and singularity.

It is honourable to the penetration of his understanding, that he was at variance with many of the Whig party in Parliament on the question of war with Bonaparte, after the violation of the treaty of Elba. It is gratifying also to observe one of the most powerful orators of modern times, his friend and countryman, Mr. Plunkett, fighting by his side upon this awful crisis of the fate of the civilized world. Having stated the real question to be, whether we should go to war, when our allies were assembled, or when they should be dispersed, Mr. Grattan thus proceeds in his speech on that occasion.

Sir, the French Government is war; it is a stratocracy, elective, aggressive, and predatory; her armies live to fight, and fight to live; their constitution is essentially war, and the object of that war, the conquest of Europe. What such a person as Bonaparte at the head of such a constitution will do, you may judge by what he has done. And first, he took possession of the greater part of Europe; he made his son King of Rome; he made his son-in-law Viceroy of Italy; he made his brother King of Holland; he made his brother-in-law King of Naples; he imprisoned the King of Spain; he banished the Regent of Portugal; and formed his plan to take possession of the Crown of England. England had checked his designs; her trident had stirred up his empire from its foundation. He complained of her tyranny at sea; but it was her power at sea which arrested his tyranny at land; the navy of England saved Europe. Knowing this, he knew the conquest of England became necessary for the accomplishment of the conquest of Europe, and the destruction of her marine, necessary for the conquest of England. Accordingly, besides raising an army of 60,000 men for the conquest of England, he applied himself to the destruction of her commerce, the foundation of her naval power. In pursuit of this object, and on his plan of a western empire, he conceived, and in part executed, the design of consigning to plunder and destruction the vast regions of Russia. He quits the genial clime of the temperate zone; he bursts through the narrow limits of an immense empire; he aban dons comfort and security; and he hurries to the pole, to hazard them all, and with them the companions of his victories, and the fame and

fruits of his crimes and his talents, on the speculation of leaving in Europe throughout the whole of its extent, no one free or independent nation. To oppose this huge conception of mischief and despotism, the great potentate of the North, from his gloomy recesses, advances to defend against the voracity of ambition, the sterility of his empire. Ambition is omnivorous; it feasts on famine, and sheds tons of blood, that it may starve in ice, in order to commit a robbery or desolation. The power of the North, I say, joins another prince whom Bonaparte had deprived of almost the whole of his authority; the King of Prussia; and then another potentate whom Bonaparte had deprived of a principal part of his dominions, the Emperor of Austria. These three powers, physical causes, final justice, the influence of your victories in Spain and Portugal, and the spirit given to Europe by the achievements and renown of your great commander, together with the precipitation of his own ambition, combine to accomplish his destruction. Bonaparte is conquered; he who said, "I will be like the Most High,” he who smote the nations with a continual stroke, this short-lived son of the morning, Lucifer, falls, and the earth is at rest; the phantom of royalty passes on to nothing, and the three Kings to the gates of Paris. There they stand the late victims of his ambition, and now the disposers of his destiny, and the masters of his empire. Without provocation he had gone to their countries with fire and sword; with the greatest provocation they come to his country with life and liberty. They do an act unparalleled in the annals of history, such as nor envy, nor time, nor malice, nor prejudice, nor ingratitude can efface; they give to himself life and royalty, and to his subjects liberty. This is greater than conquest! The present race must confess their virtues, and ages to come must crown their monuments, and place them above heroes and kings in glory everlasting.

When Bonaparte states that the conditions of the treaty of Fontainbleau are not performed, he forgets one of them, namely, the condition by which he lives. It is very true, there was a mixture of policy and prudence in this measure; but it was a great act of magnanimity notwithstanding, and it is not in Providence to turn such an act to your disadvantage. With respect to the other act, the mercy shewn to his people, I have underrated it. The allies did not give liberty to France; they enabled her to give a constitution to herself; a better constitution than that which with much laboriousness, and circumspection, and deliberation, and procrastination, the philosopher fabricated, when the Jacobins trampled down the flimsy work, murdered the vain philosophers, drove out the crazy reformers, and remained masters of the field in triumph of superior anarchy and confusion ;-better than that, I say, which the Jacobin destroyed, better than that which he afterwards formed, with some method in his madness, and more madness in his method; with such a horror of power, that, in his plan of a constitution, he left out a government, and with so many wheels, that every thing was in movement, and nothing in concert, so that the machine took fire from its own velocity; in the midst of mirth and death, with images emble matic of the public disorder, goddesses of reason: turned fool, and of

Liberty turned fury. At length, the French found their advantages in adopting the sober and unaffected security of King, Lords, and Commons, on the idea of that form of government which your ancestors procured by their firmness, and maintained by their discretion. The people had attempted to give the French liberty, and failed. The wise men (so her philosophers called themselves) had attempted to give liberty to France, and had failed. It remained for the extraordinary destiny of the French, to receive their free constitution from Kings. This constitution Bonaparte has destroyed, together with the treaty of Fontainbleau, and having broken both, desires your confidence. Russia confided, and was deceived. Austria confided, and was deceived. Have we forgotten the treaty of Luneville, and his abominable conduct to the Swiss? Spain and other nations of Europe confided, and were all deceived. During the whole of this time, he was charging on England the continuation of the war, while he was, with uniform and universal perfidy, breaking his own treaties of peace, for the purpose of renewing the war, to end it in what was worse than war itself,-his conquest of Europe.

'Gentlemen speak of the Bourbon family. I have already said, we should not force the Bourbon upon France. But we owe it to departed (I would rather say to interrupted) greatness, to observe, that the house of Bourbon was not tyrannical. Under her, every thing, except the administration of the country, was open to animadversion; every subject was open to discussion, philosophical, ecclesiastical, and political, so that learning, and arts, and sciences, made progress. Even England consented to borrow not a little from the temperate meridian of that government. Her court stood controlled by opinion, limited by principles of honour, and softened by the influence of manners; and on the whole, there was an amenity in the condition of France, which rendered the French an amiable, an enlightened, a gallant, and accomplished race. Over this gallant race, you see imposed an oriental despotism. Their present court (Bonaparte's court) has gotten the idiom of the East, as well as her constitution; fantastic and barbaric expression; an unreality, which leaves in the shade the modesty of truth, and states nothing as it is, and every thing as it is not. The attitude is affected, the taste is corrupted, and the intellect perverted. Do you wish to con firm this military tyranny in the heart of Europe? A tyranny founded on the triumph of the army over the principles of civil government, tending to universalize throughout Europe the domination of the sword, and to reduce to paper and parchment, Magna Charta, and all our civil constitutions. An experiment such as no country ever made, and no good country would ever permit; to relax the moral and religious in Auences, to set heaven and earth adrift from one another, and make God Almighty a tolerated alien in his own creation-an insurrectionary hope to every bad man in the community, and a frightful lesson of profit and power, vested in those who have pandered their allegiance from King to Emperor, and now found their pretensions to domination, on the merit of breaking their oaths and deposing their sovereign. Should VOL. XVIII. N.S.

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