Hamil were by their orders, indicted for a capital 1805. offence, defenderism. They were triumphantly acquitted, and so flagrantly were the suborned witnesses perjured, that the Judge of assize recommended a prosecution against them. Those were amongst the causes, why the repeal of 1793 did not satisfy. In addition to which the Irish Government took care, that the Irish Catholics should receive no benefit, opposing them by their known partizans and dependants in the Corporation of Dublin, when they sought for the freedom of the city, and admission to certain situations, from which they were no longer proscribed by the law of the land. Mr. Grattan then referred to the speeches delivered and published about that time by Ministers and servants of the Irish Government, and persisted in and delivered since. There they would see an attack on all the proceedings of the Irish, from the time of their addresses for free trade, such as were glorious, as well as such as were intemperate without discrimination or moderation. There they would see the Irish Ministry engaged in a wretched squabble with the Catholic Committee, and that Committee replying upon that Ministry, and degrading it more than it had degraded itself. They would further perceive the Members of that Ministry urging their charges against the Members of that Committee to disqualify other Catholics, who were not of that Committee, but who opposed it so that by their measures against one part of the Catholics, and their invective 1805. against the other, they took care to alienate, as far as in them lay the whole body. The fact was, the project of conciliation in 1793 recommended in the speech from the throne was defeated by the Irish Cabinet, which was at that time on that subject in opposition: and being incensed at the British Cabinet for the countenance afforded to the Catholics, punished the latter, and sowed those seeds, which afterwards in conjunction with other causes, produced the rebellion. Mr. Grattan continued. The same policy, which had made England a great people, would do the same for Ireland, Incalculable was the mischief, which the system of proscription produced upon the country. Irreparable was the injury done to the policy, morals and peace of the country by persecution, and encouraging the little man of blood to raise himself into power and consequence by harassing and vexing his countrymen. Yet was it impossible for one part of society to afflict the other, without paying the penalty of feeling the consequence of its own bad passions on itself. When the spirit of religious discord descended to the lower order, and the holiday became a riot, and when the petty Magistrate turned chapman and dealer in politics, turned theologian and robber, made for himself a situation in the country formed out of the monstrous lies he told of his Catholic neighbours, fabricated false panics of insurrection and invasion, then walked forth the man of blood, and atrocities, A faithful pourtrait of Orangemen.. which he durst not commit in his own name, he you, as I formerly did to the Irish Parliament, "The post you take is unfavourable: a position, "that would keep France in check, and Ireland "in thraldom, to be held against the power of one country and the freedom of the other." There were three systems for Ireland: one, such as Primate Boulter has disclosed: a people at variance on account of religion, that the Government might be strong and the country weak: a system, such a one as prevailed, when he (Mr. Grattan) had broken her chain, which made the Minister too strong for the constitution, and the country too weak for the enemy: a system, which one of its advocates had described, when he said the Protestants of Ireland were a garrison in an enemy's 1905. 1805. country, and which another gentleman had described, when he considered Ireland as a caput mortuum: but that system had failed: it ought to have failed: it was a party Government, and a party God. In adverting to the late Parliament of Ireland, he had, he said, a parental recollection of that assembly. He had attended her cradle and followed her hearse. In 14 years she had acquired for Ireland, what they had not obtained for England in a century: freedom of trade, independancy of the Legislature and of the Judges, restoration of final judicature, repeal of a perpetual mutiny bill, habeas corpus act, nullum tempus act; a great work. But when the Parliament of Ireland rejected the Catholic petition, and assented to the calumnies uttered against the Catholic body, on that day she voted the Union: and should they adopt a similar conduct, on that day they would vote the separation. He was surprized to see them running about like grown up children in search of old prejudices, preferring to buy foreign allies by subsidies, rather than to subsidize fellow subjects by privileges. He figured them then drawn out 16 against 36 millions, and paralyzing one-fifth of their own numbers by excluding them from some of the principal benefits of their constitution, at the very time, they said, all their numbers were inadequate, unless inspired by those very privileges. Such a system could not last: if the two islands renounced all national prejudices, they would form a strong Empire in the West to check, perhaps ultimately to confound the ambition of the enemy, He knew the soundness of the ground, upon which he stood, whether they, whom he constituted his Judges, applied it to constitution, where it was freedom, to Empire, where it was strength, or to religion, where it was light. The opposite principle, proscription and discord, had made in Ireland not only war, but even peace calamitous: witness the one, that followed the victories of King William to the Catholics a sad servitude, to the Protestants a drunken triumph, to both a peace without trade and without constitution. He reminded them of the rebellion of 1798, when the enemy wás mustering her expeditions in consequence of the state of Ireland: twenty millions lost, one farthing of which did not tell in Empire, and blood barbarously, boyishly, and most ingloriously expended. He conjured them to do, what then was in their power: to put an end to the proscriptive system, which was the cause of all those miseries. It would be miserable for them afterwards, should any thing untoward happen, to say, we did not foresee danger: against other dangers, against the Pope, we were impregnable: but if instead of providing against dangers, which were not, they would provide against dangers, which were, the remedy was in their hands; the franchises of the constitution. val. 1805. The Attorney General (Mr. Percival) opposed Mr. Persi the motion upon the grounds, that if the Catholics were once admitted to offices of the State, they would soon become the State itself: they would never rest satisfied, till they had recovered the |