tally to fail on trial. We feel faint and heartless, and without the smallest degree of self-opinion. In plain words, we are cowed. When men give up their violence and injustice without a struggle, their condition is next to desperate. When no art, no management, no argument, is necessary to abate their pride and overcome their prejudices, and their uneasiness only excites an obscure and feeble rattling in their throat, their final dissolution seems not far off. In this miserable state we are still further depressed by the overbearing influence of the crown. It acts with the officious cruelty of a mercenary nurse, who, under pretence of tenderness, stifles us with our clothes, and plucks the pillow from our heads. Injectu multæ vestis opprimi senem jubet. Under this influence we have so little will of our own, that, even in any apparent activity we may be got to assume, I may say, without any violence to sense, and with very little to language, we are merely passive. We have yielded to your demands this session. In the last session we refused to prevent them. In both cases, the passive and the active, our principle was the same. Had the crown pleased to retain the spirit, with regard to Ireland, which seems to be now all directed to America, we should have neglected our own immediate defence, and sent over the last man of our militia to fight with the last man of your volunteers.

To this influence the principle of action, the principle of policy, and the principle of union of the present minority are opposed. These principles of the opposition are the only thing which preserves a single symptom of life in the nation. That opposition is composed of the far greater part of the independent property and independent rank of the kingdom,

of whatever is most untainted in character, and of whatever ability remains unextinguished in the people, and of all which tends to draw the attention of foreign countries upon this. It is now in its final and conclusive struggle. It has to struggle against a force to which, I am afraid, it is not equal. The whole kingdom of Scotland ranges with the venal, the unprincipled, and the wrong-principled of this; and if the kingdom of Ireland thinks proper to pass into the same camp, we shall certainly be obliged to quit the field. In that case, if I know anything of this country, another constitutional opposition can never be formed in it; and if this be impossible, it will be at least as much so (if there can be degrees in impossibility) to have a constitutional administration at any future time. The possibility of the former is the only security for the existence of the latter. Whether the present administration be in the least like one, I must venture to doubt, even in the honey-moon of the Irish fondness to Lord North, which has succeeded to all their slappings and scratchings.

If liberty cannot maintain its ground in this kingdom, I am sure that it cannot have any long continuance in yours. Our liberty might now and then jar and strike a discord with that of Ireland. The thing is possible: but still the instruments might play in concert. But if ours be unstrung, yours will be hung up on a peg, and both will be mute forever. Your new military force may give you confidence, and it serves well for a turn; but you and I know that it has not root. It is not perennial, and would prove but a poor shelter for your liberty, when this nation, having no interest in its own, could look

upon yours with the eye of envy and disgust. I cannot, therefore, help thinking, and telling you what with great submission I think, that, if the Parliament of Ireland be so jealous of the spirit of our common Constitution as she seems to be, it was not so discreet to mix with the panegyric on the minister so large a portion of acrimony to the independent part of this nation. You never received any sort of injury from them, and you are grown to that degree of importance that the discourses in your Parliament will have a much greater effect on our immediate fortune than our conversation can have upon yours. In the end they will seriously affect both.

I have looked back upon our conduct and our public conversations in order to discover what it is that can have given you offence. I have done so, because I am ready to admit that to offend you without any cause would be as contrary to true policy as I am sure it must be to the inclinations of almost every one of us. About two years ago Lord Nugent moved six propositions in favor of Ireland in the House of Commons. At the time of the motions, and during the debate, Lord North was either wholly out of the House, or engaged in other matters of business or pleasantry, in the remotest recesses of the West Saxon corner. He took no part whatsoever in the affair; but it was supposed his neutrality was more inclined towards the side of favor. mover being a person in office was, however, the only indication that was given of such a leaning. We who supported the propositions, finding them better relished than at first we looked for, pursued our advantage, and began to open a way for more essen

The

tial benefits to Ireland. On the other hand, those who had hitherto opposed them in vain redoubled their efforts, and became exceedingly clamorous. Then it was that Lord North found it necessary to come out of his fastness, and to interpose between the contending parties. In this character of mediator, he declared, that, if anything beyond the first six resolutions should be attempted, he would oppose the whole, but that, if we rested there, the original motions should have his support. On this a sort of convention took place between him and the managers of the Irish business, in which the six resolutions were to be considered as an uti possidetis, and to be held sacred.

By this time other parties began to appear. A good many of the trading towns, and manufactures of various kinds, took the alarm. Petitions crowded in upon one another, and the bar was occupied by a formidable body of council. Lord N. was staggered by this new battery. He is not of a constitution to encounter such an opposition as had then risen, when there were no other objects in view than those that were then before the House. In order not to lose him, we were obliged to abandon, bit by bit, the most considerable part of the original agreement.

In several parts, however, he continued fair and firm. For my own part, I acted, as I trust I commonly do, with decision. I saw very well that the things we had got were of no great consideration; but they were, even in their defects, somewhat leading. I was in hopes that we might obtain gradually and by parts what we might attempt at once and in the whole without success, - that one concession would lead to another, and that the people of Eng

land discovering by a progressive experience that none of the concessions actually made were followed by the consequences they had dreaded, their fears from what they were yet to yield would considerably diminish. But that to which I attached myself the most particularly was, to fix the principle of a free trade in all the ports of these islands, as founded in justice, and beneficial to the whole, but principally to this, the seat of the supreme power. And this I labored to the utmost of my might, upon general principles, illustrated by all the commercial detail with which my little inquiries in life were able to furnish me. I ought to forget such trifling things as those, with all concerning myself; and possibly I might have forgotten them, if the Lord Advocate of Scotland had not, in a very flattering manner, revived them in my memory, in a full House in this session. He told me that my arguments, such as they were, had made him, at the period I allude to, change the opinion with which he had come into the House strongly impressed. I am sure that at the time at least twenty more told me the same thing. I certainly ought not to take their style of compliment as a testimony to fact; neither do I. But all this showed sufficiently, not what they thought of my ability, but what they saw of my zeal. I could say more in proof of the effects of that zeal, and of the unceasing industry with which I then acted, both in my endeavors which were apparent and those that were not so visible. Let it be remembered that I showed those dispositions while the Parliament of England was in a capacity to deliberate and in a situation to refuse, when there was something to be risked here by being suspected of a partiality to Ireland, when there was an honorable danger attending