nod had marshalled to every command, that issued from their bench.

be affected to reprobate; multiply undue influence, and create or revive offices merely for private gratification: and finally, shall attach the best office of the kingdom to his family, whilst he affects to attach the love of the public to his person: such a man could not be surprised at the loss of popularity; an event the natural consequence, not of public inconstancy, but of his own inconsistency; of his great professions and his contingent savings overbalanced by his jobbing; a teazing and minute industry ending in one great principle of economy, and tarnished by attempts to increase the influence of corruption, and by a sordid and indecorous sense of private interest.

Sir John (now Lord) Blaquiere, having had particular reason to be displeased at the marquis's scrutinizing spirit of economy, made a most angry and personal invective against the lord lieutenant. Mr. Curran spoke largely upon the question; but referred not to facts: he strongly opposed the address, as an address of delay, and improper in its time, nature and circumstances. He observed, that he found the appeal to the compassion of the public stronger than to their justice. He felt the reverses of human fate. He remembered this very supplicant for a compliment, to which he pretended only because it was no compliment, drawn into that city by the people harnessed to his chariot, through streets blazing with illuminations; and after more than a year's labour at computation, he had hazarded all on a paragraph, stating no one act of private or of public good, supported by no man that said he loved him, attested by no act, that said he ought to be beloved, defended not by assertion of his merit, but an extenuation of his delinquency. So much having been said of the Marquis of Buckingham's character and conduct as viceroy of Ireland in face of his secretary and all the supporters of his administration, historical justice demands, that I should lay before the reader all that was said in answer to it. Mr. M. Mason said Mr. Grattan had argued from two facts, which he supposed, but of which there was no proof; the pension to Mr. Orde and the reversion to Mr. Grenville: but of a third, viz. the appointment of a second counsel to the revenue, he could say, it was really aconomical, as revenue causes had so multiplied, that the expence of employing counsel not connected with the revenue was become enormous. Mr. Fitzgib bon maintained this appointment not only as an act of economy, but of absolute necessity; as one might be attending a trial at Derry, whilst the other was at Cork. Mr. Boyd spoke to the same effect. Mr. Corry admitted a large encrease of salary in his appointment (surveyor of the ordnance), but could at the same time shew some savings to the public in his department, which would fully justify whatever alteration had been made: the intention of the alteration was to place the management in the hands of men, who might be supposed above the little arts of plunder and peculation, which had before disgraced the department much to the public loss. He had ever opposed the extension of pensions, and opposition to that practice was one of the condi tions, on which he had accepted of office: but he could not see, that the Marquis of Buckingham deserved censure because a bill to limit pensions had been opposed in his administration. The majority of the house stood pledged to oppose the bill: but the marquis had not added a pension to the list. The solicitor general assured the house, that the Marquis of Buckingham had always spoken honourably of his predecessor. The chancellor of the Exchequer reminded the house, that all the objections which had been made were either drawn from unproved assertions of past misconduct, or suggestions and conjectures of future impropriety: but he said from experience, that whenever the books should come under the inspection of the house, there would be ample proof of his excellency's attention to economy. Mr. Coote said, the soldiers had not been deprived of their allowance of fuel: some abuses in the distribution of that article indeed had been corrected; and his excellency spoke always most handsomely of the Duke of Rutland. Mr, Cuffe (now Lord Tyrawley) confirmed what had been said of the fuel. Mr.

If the nature of the Irish character be fairly considered, that they are a people of quick impulse, irascible, generous, unsuspecting, daring and intrepid, forming the wisest resolu tions, but impatient of the delays necessary to bring them to maturity, and crown their perseverance with success: if it be considered, that the immediate prospect then before the eyes of the nation was a change of government, in every principle and feature differing from that of the Marquis of Buckingham, composed of those men, who had given their country freedom and a constitution in 1782, it will be no wonder, that all independent men in parliament should have risen unanimously against a government so little popular; and even, that many, who had been fettered to the pernicious system should have indignantly burst their trammels, and once more stood forward in support of Irish freedom. Pointed contrasts were drawn between the conduct of the two independent kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. The parliament of England had been convened, and the state of the nation boldly investigated in it. Ministers there dared not irritate the people; in Ireland, under the same exigency, they suffered every outrage, and that the Irish might not disagree from the British senate, it was not suffered to assemble. God had incapacitated their king, and the viceroy had incapacitated the other two estates; by virtue of what authority then did he retain his lieutenancy? It was, they said, a paradox in government, that the representative should continue when the power deputing had ceased. It was a new phenomenon, that the shadow remained when the substance was no more. They insisted, that lieutenants of Ireland should regulate their conduct by the constitution of Ireland; and know no other standard; but they were in fact motionless puppets, until the string which actuated them was pulled from across the channel.

Secretary Hamilton said that he held his house in the Park as an appendage of his office: it was an establishment as old as James I. and every thing there had been conducted with frugality: the accommodation he possessed had been provided by parliament, and whilst his countrymen approved of it, he should never be ashamed of his possession.

Mr. Marcus Beresford agreed with Mr. Curran, that the administration of the Marquis of Buckingham exhibited a strong proof of the instability of human grandeur. But little more than a twelvemonth ago, he was introduced with the plaudits of the nation and of the senate. Those twelve months he had with the most sedulous attention employed himself for the benefit of the country, œconomizing her expences, and improving her finances. During these twelve months he had not done a single act to merit reprehension, yet such was the futile disposition of some and the party spirit of others, that an effort was made to withhold a trifling compliment, while little-minded-men could scarcely refrain from insulting a chief governor, by whose favour they hoped no longer to benefit.

After an amended and qualified address had been voted in the commons, Mr. Fitzherbert (now Lord St. Helen's) moved, that the house should on Monday (the 16th) resolve itself into a committee of the whole house to take into consideration the state of the nation.* As the evident design of this delay was to prevent the Irish parliament from coming to any resolution relative to a regency, before the determination of the British parliament could be proposed to them for their concurrence, it was strongly opposed, as derogatory to the independence of that kingdom, and to the dignity and credit of its parliament. Mr. Grattan, therefore, proposed that the house should meet on the next Wednesday; and his amendment after some debate, was carried by a majority of 128 to 74.

A majority of 54 against the minister was an unexpected thunder clap on the Treasury Bench: insomuch, that when the chancellor of the Exchequer moved for proceeding immediately upon the business of supply preparatory to the passing of the money bills, and was opposed by Mr. Grattan, they would not risk a division; though by the warmth, with which the attorney general argued for the propriety of the measure, it was an object, which government had much at heart.

The 11th of February, 1789, was the great day of contest upon the regency of Ireland: Mr. Grattan and Mr. Fitzgibbon took the lead on the opposite sides: the house being in committee on the state of the nation, after some preliminary conversation, in which the plan of the castle was candidly avowed by Mr. Fitzherbert, Mr. Grattan said, that the right honourable gentleman had stated the plan of the castle to be limitation and a bill. He proposed to name for the regency of that realm, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales; in that they perfectly agreed and only followed the most decided wishes of the people of Ireland; they were clear, and had been so from the first, that His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales ought, and must be the regent; but they were also clear, that he should be invested with the full regal power; plenitude of royal power. The limitations, which a certain member proposed to impose, were suggested with a view to preserve a servile imitation of the proceedings of another country, not in the choice of a regent, which was a common concern, but in the particular provisions and limitations, which were not a common concern, and which ought to be, and must be governed by the particular circumstances of the different countries. The bill, or instrument which

* 13 Journ. Com. p. 11. There might have been more truth than delicacy in what Mr. Browne (of the College) observed in this debate. 9 Parl. Deb. p. 30. "It was the interest of Lord Buckingham to defer the business of "appointing a controlling power over him. As long as the money bills went "on in their usual course, there was nothing to urge him to expedition to that "appointment; and he should expect every kind of trick and artifice on the "part of government, in order to obtain procrastination."

he called a bill, was suggested on an opinion, that an Irish act of parliament might pass without a king in a situation to give the royal assent, and without a regent appointed by the Irish Houses of parliament to supply his place. The idea of limitation, he conceived to be an attack on the necessary power of government; the idea of his bill was an attack on the King of Ireland. They had heard the castle dissenting from their suggestion. It remained for them to take the business out of their hands, and confide the custody of the great and important matter to men more constitutional and respectable. The lords and commons of Ireland, and not the castle, should take the leading part in this great duty. The country gentlemen, who procured the constitution, should nominate the regent. He should submit to them the proceedings they intended in the discharge of that great and necessary duty.

They proposed to begin by a resolution declaring the incapacity of the king, for the present, to discharge the personal functions of the regal power. It was a melancholy truth, but a truth of which no man entertained a doubt; the recovery of the sovereign, however the object of every man's wishes, was that uncertain event, on which no man would presume to despair or to decide. Having then by the first resolution ascertained the deficiency in the personal exercise of the regal power, the next step would be the supply of that deficiency: that melancholy duty fell on the two houses of the Irish parliament; whether they were to be considered as the only surviving estates capable of doing the act, or as the highest description of his majesty's people of Ireland. The method whereby he proposed these great assemblies should supply this deficiency, was address. There were two ways of proceeding to these august bodies perfectly familiar; one by way of legislation; the other by way of address. When they proceeded by way of legislation, it was on the supposition of a third in a capacity to act; but address was a mode exclusively their own, and complete without the interference of a third estate; it was that known parliamentary method, by which the two houses exercised those powers to which they were jointly competent; therefore, he submitted to them, that the mode by address, was the most proper for supplying the existing deficiency; and though the address should on this occasion have all the force and operation of law, yet still that force and operation arose from the necessity of the case, and were confined to it. They would not profess to legislate in the ordinary forms, as if legislation were their ordinary province; they proposed to make an efficient third estate in order to legislate, not to legislate in order to create the third estate, the deficiency being the want of an efficient third estate. The creation of such an estate was the only act that deficiency made

indispensable; so limiting their act they would part with their present extraordinary power the moment they should have exercised it, and the very nature of their act would discharge and determine their extraordinary authority.

But as the addresses of parliament, though competent on the event of such a deficiency to create an efficient third estate, yet would not and could not with propriety annex to their act the forms of law and the stamps of legislation, it was thought advisable, after the acceptance of the regency, that there should be an act passed reciting the deficiency in the personal exercise of the regal power, and of his royal highness's acceptance of the regency of the realm, at the instance and desire of the two houses of the Irish parliament, and further, to declare and enact, that he was and should be regent thereof during the continuation of his majesty's indisposition. The terms of the act would describe the powers of the regent; and the power intended was, the personal exercise of the full regal authority; and the reason why plenitude of regal power was intended by the address, and afterwards by the bill, was to be found in the nature of the prerogative, which was given, not for the sake of the king, but of the people, for whose use kings and regents, and prerogatives were conceived. They knew of no political reason, why the prerogatives in question should be destroyed, nor any personal reason why they should be suspended.

He had stated the method to be pursued, indeed the method almost stated itself; undoubtedly it was not the method pursued by Great Britain; but the diversity arose from obvious causes. The declaration of right was omitted in their proceedings; why? Because they knew of no claim advanced against the privileges of the people. A declaration of right in such a case, would be a declaration without a meaning; it would bespeak an attack, which had not been made, and would be a defence against no invasion: it would be a false alarm and hold out false signals of public danger, in times of perfect safety, confounding and perplexing the public mind; so that in the moment of real attack, the people would not be forthcoming. He objected to a declaration of right in Ireland, therefore, as bad husbandry of popular artillery. He objected to it also, as attempting to convey to posterity historic evidence against the constitutional principles of the second person in his majesty's dominions, without any ground or pretence whatsoever. For these two reasons he had not adopted the declaration of right, conceiving it would in that country be no more than a protestation against a claim, which had not been made, and therefore would be a false alarm and a false suggestion.

Their method differed also from that pursued by Great Britain, inasmuch as they gave the full exercise of the regal power;