CHAP. XI.] MR. GRATTAN'S PROPER COURSE. 415

tion, however degrading and insulting, of every security and privilege which form the consideration of the subject's obedience, can justify even morally, independently of legal obligation, any resort to combination, or resistance; but above all, to the one or the other as connected with foreign force, though a nation should be too weak within itself to shake off the yoke of power,-though it may have emancipated itself from the conditions annexed to its existence.

The application of this principle, as it has applied or may apply hereafter to Ireland, it is not my province or purpose to discuss; but the difficulty of setting about a public refutation of the charge of being a United Irishman, even in their sense of the word, is, that it must advance one of two propositions-either that in your opinion no circumstances can justify such a combination, which perhaps you are not prepared to assert; or else that the actual circumstances under which that combination took place did so little justify it, that it is an impeachment of moral character to be supposed to have acceded to it.

I say these are the only propositions, because, taking it to be only an aspersion which endangers the person by imputing a crime that may be prosecuted, I think it is too contemptible to deserve notice.

The Rebellion is now conquered, and therefore your disavowal will not be useful for the maintenance of authority, which is already established; it will not (however convincing and satisfactory) make peace with Government, and restore you to its confidence, neither would you accept of its confidence, supposing it could produce that effect ; and nothing therefore would remain to it but the declaration to the mortified, discomfited, subdued Irish, (many of whom believed, at least, that they acted upon principle, though they were traitors against the law,) that you condemn and abjure them, and that, with all your objections to Government, you are ready to meet them in the field.

If this be a moral duty in a subject of Ireland at this moment, as tending to restore peace and good order, and Government, security to personal liberty, and protection to property, I would, in your place, make the declaration at all hazards; but if I thought it was more likely to create exasperation than to restore harmony, I would have you exercise the right of silence where the avowal of your sentiments could be of no service to your country, and prepare

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[CHAP. XI. yourself to act whenever you observed a fit occasion for exertion, as your duty to God, to your country, and to the world, unite in exacting from a man of your great talents and influence.

I only throw out these hints for your own reflection, and for consultation with your friends connected with Ireland, who are alone capable of advising you with propriety and safety. Yours, sincerely, THOMAS ERSKINE.

Notwithstanding the opinion of Mr. Erskine, absolute silence did not appear to Mr. Grattan to be the course which he ought to pursue on the occasion. He accordingly published some remarks on the conduct which had been pursued towards him; and addressed his letter to an English newspaper, as in Ireland the press would have feared to insert it.

MR. GRATTAN TO THE EDITOR OF THE COURIER.

SIR, I resort to your power to communicate a letter to certain descriptions of persons in Ireland, who have been extremely busy in their attacks on me, and who deserve not absolute silence, nor yet much notice.

I choose to begin with that rank which I respect mostthe Merchants; and were those persons using the name of that corporation the mercantile body of Dublin, I should be sorry indeed; not because I allow that the whole body, much as I respect them, could, by a scandalous proceeding bear down my character, but because I should be afflicted that by such a proceeding they had forfeited their own. I feel myself so linked and connected with every thing which belongs to the great body of the people of Ireland, that a comprehensive description of them could not, by any injustice, disgrace itself, without involving their natural friend and advocate in their degradation. Happy am I, however, that the persons in question are no more the merchants of Dublin than they are the people of Ireland; on the contrary, that they are an inconsiderable gathering, actuated by what folly or faction I care not, who have, in the charge against me, uttered not only what cannot be true, but what is recorded to be false: they have said, that they have legal evidence that I was concerned in the late rebellion, and the only matter they could have had before them was the Report of the Committee of the

CHAP. XI.] MR. GRATTAN'S MANIFESTO.

417

Irish Lords, which is no legal evidence of any charge whatever against me; and which, if it were, is not evidence of that crime-so that those men, calling themselves the Guild of Merchants of Dublin, have asserted, published, and sealed, a self-convicted falsehood. I lament to be forced to use such words-and yet they are the mildest words such a conduct deserves, and must be understood by them, and applied to them in a sense the most unmeasured, and the most unqualified.

To the Corporation of Dublin I wish to say a word: They are not the citizens of Dublin-they are not even a considerable part of them, and they never spoke their spirit nor their sentiments; but as they have the honour of appertaining to the city, they are entitled to a degree of attention; and the best method of shewing it, is by advising them to be less fond of displaying themselves on every occasion. There are cases where their exertions are proofs of their folly, and where their repose would be an argument of their wisdom. All ministers, all men in power, all clerks, and the whole mob and rabble of the court, have been so sweltered with their charms, that it now requires a more than popular appetite to encounter their embraces; but very little share of philosophy to endure their displeasure. They ever wait on the wink of power to praise or persecute, and to blemish a reputation by unjust calumny, or unmeaning panegyric. respect to them-with respect to the other corporations— with respect to all persons adopting similar proceedings, I am inclined to attribute much less to malice, and much more to folly-a good deal to influence-a good deal to servility, and to that low, impotent, persecuting spirit, by which the slavish mind shows its devotion at the expence of its understanding.

With

I ought not to be angry with these men, because I am one of the few of his Majesty's subjects, whom their charges, even if they were echoed as they are reprobated by my country, could not affect, and who might receive a thousand such shafts on the shield of character, not with indignation, not with contempt, but with calm and pointed forgiveness-the result of a proud superiority, founded on my services and their injustice. To be angry with such men were to be degraded. On the subject of the charge I will make no explanation to them. I have said thus much to them, and they deserve much more; but I am not in

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the habit of reproaching any portion of my fellow-citizens: if their mortification were the wish of my heart, I would refer them to the invectives of some of his Majesty's ministers.

Were it not robbing heaven of their time, I would say a few words to the Doctors. They had judged-they had condemned; but they forgot to try-they forgot to inquire. Pindaric poetry I admire; yet, I desire not to be tried by Pindaric justice. But divine men have privileges over the moral order of things, and in the holy way may spurn the vulgar bonds of equity, and pedant rules of evidence; perhaps the fabled buckler of divinity is not always court proof-up and down, exalted and detestedhis picture high, his person just not hanged; mildness and Fitzwilliam; coercion and torture. Do I mention these things to condemn the learned Doctors?-no. But may I congratulate the memory of mad Athens, and tempestuous Rome, who find a pious shade cast over their insanities, by an example of more than republican inconstancy, in the instance of grave, orderly, regular, solid, and most excellent clergymen. I assure them I am not their enemy, though they may be mine. But that is not the case with another description of men, with whom I should be ashamed to discourse in the same tone of temper and moderation—I mean that Irish faction, which is the secret mover of all this calumny and all this injustice-they stand at the head of a bloody combination. I look on them as the cause of every evil that has of late fallen on their country. I protest I do not know a faction which, considering the very small measure of their credit and ability, has done so much mischief to their king and country. They opposed the restoration of the Constitution of Ireland; they afterwards endeavoured to betray and undermine it; they introduced a system of corruption unknown in the annals of parliament they then proclaimed that corruption so loudly, so scandalously, and so broadly, that one of them was obliged to deny in one house, the notorious expressions he had used in another. They accompanied these offences by an abominable petulance of invective uttered from time to time against the great body of the people of Ireland, and having by such proceedings, and such a discourse, lost their affection, they resorted to a system of coercion to support a system of torture attendant on a conspiracy of which their crimes was the cause. And now their country displays a

CHAP. XI.]

LETTER TO MR. BERWICK.

419

most extraordinary contest-where an Englishman, at the head of its government, struggles to spare the Irish people, and an Irish faction presses to shed their blood! 1 repeat it,—I do not know a faction more dangerous, more malignant, or more sanguinary.*

I am ready to enter into a detail of all this: enough at present to say, that I have been forced to write thus much, because I have no opportunity of vindication but the press, and no press but that of England.

I shall conclude by assuring that faction, that I am apprized of their enmity, and shall wait to meet their hostility; hoping, however, that they may not be my judges, or their blood-hounds my jury. At all events, if such a faction be permitted to dominate in Ireland, I had rather suffer by its injustice, than live under its oppression. HENRY GRATTAN.

Twickenham, Nov. 9, 1798.

MR. GRATTAN TO THE REV. MR. BERWICK.

November 10, 1798.

MY DEAR DOCTOR ;-I sent you a letter in the Courier. I think the Merchants' resolutions ought to be despised; I have just noticed it to despise it. Hardy gives it too much consequence. A lawsuit would determine nothing except that they told a lie, which the evidence decides without the suit.

Tell my Lord Pery I love him; assure him, moreover, that the evidence, as stated in the Report of the Lords' Committee, is not only not founded in fact, but, in every fact which is essential, unfounded.

I will trouble you with the real case hereafter; but they have abused me too much to suffer me to stoop to excul

*The violence of party, and the fell spirit of Orangeism which was so artfully fostered under Mr. Pitt's Government in Ireland, may be judged of from the following occurrence. One of the insurgent party had returned from transportation a little before the period allowed by law had elapsed. He was brought to the house of a noblemana captain of yeomanry, and was desired to disclose the names of his former associates; this he refused to do. There was a jovial party in the house at the time, and the nobleman took out his watch, and gave the man half an hour to make up his mind. He was again asked to disclose his associates; he again refused; upon which he was instantly shot on the steps of the hall door! The wife of this nobleman went on her knees to beg his life; but her husband was inexorable. Yet, only a few hours later, and no man would have dared to touch a hair of his head!