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more astonishing was, that Sir John Macpherson, (who, though a gentleman of sense and honour, he stated to be rather oriental in his imagination, and not learned in the Sublime and Beautiful from the immortal leader of this persecution, and who had before opposed Mr. Hastings) was caught by this bold bombastic quibble, and joined in the same words, that the MAJESTY of JUSTICE ought not to be approached without solicitation." "But JUSTICE is not this halt and miserable object!" continued Mr. Sheridan." It is not the ineffective bauble of an Indian pagod !---It is not the portentous phantom of despair---It is not like any fabled monster, formed in the eclipse of reason, and found in some unhallowed grove of superstitious darkness, and political dismay! No, my lords!

"In the happy reverse of all this, I turn from this disgusting caricature to the REAL IMAGE!---JUSTICE I have now before me, AUGUST and PURE! the abstract idea of all that would be perfect in the spirits and the aspirings of men! where the mind rises, where the heart expands: ---where the countenance is ever placid and benign :---where her favourite attitude is to stoop to the unfortunate :---to hear their cry and to help them :---to rescue and relieve, to succour and save. ---Majestic, from its mercy :---venerable, from its utility:---uplifted, without pride:---firm, without obduracy:---beneficent in each preference :--lovely, though

in her frown!

“On!THAT JUSTICE I RELY :---deliberate and sure, abstracted from all party purpose and political speculation !---not on words, but on facts!---You, my lords, who hear me, I conjure, by those RIGHTS it is your best privilege to preserve-by that FAME it is your best pleasure to inherit by all those FEELINGS which refer to the first term in the series of existence, the ORIGINAL COMPACT of our nature--our CONTROLLING RANK in the Creation -This is the call on all,-to administer to truth and equity, as they would satisfy the laws and satisfy themselves-with the most exalted bliss, possible or conceivable for our nature:-The SELF-APPROVING CONSCIOUSNESS OF VIRTUE, when the condemnation we look for will be one of the most ample mercies accomplished for mankind since the creation of the world!

"MY LORDS, I HAVE DONE!"

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I have shown the claim of England is not a case of precedent; violation is not legislation; robbery unpunished does not repeal the decalogue; precedent cannot prevail against an act of parliament; it is a prava consuetudo, not a law; and a course of precedent is a course of violation. Could precedent repeal the great charter? it was thirty times violated; but such violation did not cancel the great charter, but proved so many challenges to re-affirm, re-instate, and glorify that inviolable instrument of public liberty. The reign of Henry the Eighth was a precedent against the privilege of Parliament; forced loans had their precedents, ship money had its precedents. Charles the First imposed a loan by his own authority; five gentlemen refuse to pay it; they are imprisoned by a warrant from the council; they are brought up on their habeas corpus; they produce six laws beside the charter in their favour: the judges rely on precedent, and remand the prisoners: these judges despised the old laws to which they and their predecessors were sworn, and stood on precedents on which those predecessors were perjured; but these franchises survived those pliant judges, and afterwards sat in judgment upon them, and left in their punishment a precedent better than their example, the triumph of the law over the perjury of the judges. What has been the conduct of the people of England on the subject of precedent? You are armed with her laws, be animated by her example: her Declaration of Rights, after reciting precedents against the liberty of the subject, says, "all such doings, and so forth, shall be utterly void:" her great charter had set forth that any judgment given to the contrary shall be utterly void: she formed her petition of right upon her birth-right,-your birth-right against precedent; she formed her declaration of right on the same ground, she considered the right of kings as defeasible, and the birth-right of the subject as indefeasible, and she deposed a king who had, under the authority of precedent and adjudication, invaded the indefeasible right of the subject, out of which right she formed not only a revolution by a dynasty, that had and has no other foundation than that which depends on the abolition of every arbitrary maxim in church and state,-the venal judgment,

the violent precedent, and the barefaced impudence of the law of conquest. Has then the birth-right of the British subject, your birth-right, been sufficient against precedent? (the precedent of the Plantagenets, the precedent of the Tudors, the precedent of the Stuarts,) to form a petition of right, a declaration of right, a revolution, cancel the oath of allegiance, depose James, establish William, royalize the house of Hanover? has our common birth-right done all this for England, and given security to her meanest subject, and clothed her beggar with his sturdiness? and has it left Ireland naked, subject to be bound without your consent, taxed with out your consent, with your commerce restricted, an independent army, and a dependant Parliament, and your property adjudged by the decisions of another country? We have done with precedent. She then resorts to authority; to what authority? to her judges. To do what? to repeal acts of parliament by interpretation. What act? Magna Charta,-the act that forms the security of the realm. I respect the judges, but in this case I object to their authority, first, because they are partial, being of the country whose power they are to discuss; secondly, because they are dependent, being punishable by the parliament whose claims they are to arbitrate; thirdly, because they are incompetent, being by their office obliged to pronounce the law as parliament declares; fourthly, because they are inadmissible, being in this case called upon to repeal an act of parliament under colour of interpretation: the great charter, the 10th of Henry the Fourth, the 29th of Henry the Sixth, the act of faculties, do not want an interpreter: these say, no English statute shall be executed in Ireland till confirmed by the Irish parliament, no Irish subject to be bound by statutes except ordained within the realm; to say they may, is to repeal, not to interpret; such explanation is violation, not interpretation, and the judge not an authority, but an offender; besides, the judges are bad arbiters of public liberty; there is no act of power for which you have not a precedent, nor any false doctrine for which you have not an adjudication. Lord Bacon maintained a dispensing power, Lord Coke maintained a dispensing power, Lord Chief Justice Fleming affirmed the power of the king to lay port duties, Judge Blackstone maintained the power of the House of Commons to disqualify by the vote of

its own body, when the Attorney General of Charles the First filed an information against three members of parliament for their speeches in the House of Commons; the judges of the King's Bench fined and confined them all: there is no adjudication which the judges of England can make against Ireland, that they have not made against their own country: now, as the people of England have disregarded such authority when urged against their own liberties, so shall we disregard the same authority when urged against ours: we cannot allow England to plead her magna charta against the authority of her judges, and to set up the authority of her judges against the magna charta of Ireland; nor must she answer her judges with the principles of the revolution, and answer Ireland with the principles of the jacobite; for neither judgments, nor judges' opinions, nor precedents, are laws; still less can they repeal laws, still less franchises, and least of all, charters: these things read themselves without a judge, and in despite of him; they put forth a subterranean voice even against kings, and though buried for ages, like the blood of the murdered man, they rise up in judgment, and call for justice.

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This brings the claim of England to a mere question of force: it is a right which Swift, I think it is Swift, has explained,

the right of the grenadier to take the property of a naked man. I add, this man has now gotten back his arms, and begs to get back his property. Thus the question remaining is a question of ability; and in considering this, you are not to contemplate alone the difficulties in your front; you are to look back too on the strength in your rear. The claim by conquest naturally leads to the subject of the volunteers. You have an immense force, the shape of a much greater, of different religions, but of one political faith, kept up for three years defending the country; for the government took away her troops and consigned her defence to the people ;-defending the government, I say, aiding the civil power, and pledged to maintain the liberty of Ireland to the last drop of their blood. Who is this body? the Commons of Ireland! and you at the head of them: it is more-it is the society in its greatest possible description; it is the property---it is the soul of the country armed: they, for this body, have yet no adequate name. In the summer

of 1780, they agree to a declaration of right; in the summer of 1781, they hear that the French are at sea; in the heat and hurricane of their zeal for liberty, they stop; without delay, they offer to march; their march waits only for the commands of the Castle: the castle, where the sagacious courtier had abandoned his uniform, finds it prudent to receive a selfarmed association: that self-armed association this age has beheld; posterity will admire---will wonder. The delegates of that self-armed association enter the mansion of the government, ascend the steps, advance to the presence of the Lord-Lieutenant, and make a tender of their lives and fortunes, with the form and reception of an authenticated establishment. A painter might here display and contrast the loyalty of a courtier with that of a volunteer; he would paint the courtier hurrying off his uniform, casting away his arms, filling his pockets with the public money, and then presenting to his sovereign naked servitude; he would paint the volunteer seizing his charters, handling his arms, forming his columns, improving his discipline, demanding his rights, and then, at the foot of the throne, making a tender of armed allegiance. He had no objection to die by the side of England; but he must be found dead with her charter in his hand.

Stationed as you are, and placed as you are in relation to the community and these great objects, how do you mean to proceed? submit, and take the lead in the desertion? Impossible! The strength which at your back supports your virtue, precludes your apostacy; the armed presence of the nation will not bend; the community will not be sold; nor will a nation in arms suffer the eternal blessing of freedom and renown to depend on the experiment, whether this villain shall be a pensioner, or that pickpocket shall be a peer. Before you decide on the practicability of being slaves for ever, look to America. Do you see nothing in that America but the and prison of your armies? and do you not see in her range of territory, cheapness of living, variety of climate, and simplicity of life,---the drain of Europe? Whatever is bold and disconsolate, sullen virtue and wounded pride; all, all to that point will precipitate; and what you trample on in Europe will sting you in America. When Philadelphia, or whatever city the Ameri

grave

Mr. O'Hara.

can appoints for empire, sends forth her ambassadors to the different kings in Europe, and manifests to the world her independency and power; do you imagine you will persuade Ireland to be satisfied with an English Parliament making laws for her; satisfied with a refusal to her loyalty, of those privileges which were of fered to the arms of America? How will individuals among you like this? Some of the gentlemen whom I now see in their places, are the descendants of kings; the illustrious gentleman* on the far bench; my illustrioust friend near me. Will they derogate from the royalty of their forefathers, bow their honoured heads, or acknowledge the crown of their ancestors, or more than regal power on the brow of every forty-shilling freeholder in England, or on any front except that of His Majesty? Are the American enemies to be free, and these royal subjects slaves? or in what quality does His Majesty choose to contemplate the Irish here. after? His subjects in parliament, or his equals in congress? Submission, therefore, will not do: there remains, then, but one way; assert the independency of your parliament. What do you wait for? Do you wait for a peace; till the volunteer retires, and the minister replies by his cannon? The Stag frigate is now in your harbour; or do you wait for more calamities in the fortunes of England, till the empire is a wreck, and the two countries go down together? or do you delay, till Providence, beholding you on your knees, shall fall in love with your meanness, and rain on your servility constitution like manna. You go to the house of God when you want heat or moisture, and you interfere with God's providence by your importunities. Are the princes of the earth more vigilant than the Almighty, that you should besiege the throne of mercy with your solicitations, and hold it unnecessary to admonish the King? or do you wait till your country speaks to you in thunder? Let me conclude by observing, that you have the two claims before you; the claim of England to power, and of Ireland to liberty: and I have shown you, that England has no title to that power to make laws for Ireland; none by nature, none by compact, none by usage, and none by conquest; and that Ireland has several titles against the claims of England;-a title by nature, a title by compact, and a title by divers positive acts of

+ Mr. O'Neill.

parliament; a title by charter, and by all the laws by which England possesses her liberties;-by England's interpretation of those laws, by her renunciation of conquest, and her acknowledgment of the law of original compact*.

36. From Mr. GRATTAN'S Speech upon the Declaration of Right being carried, I am now to address a free people: ages have passed away, and this is the first moment in which you could be distinguished by that appellation.

I have spoken on the subject of your liberty so often, that I have nothing to add, and have only to admire by what heavendirected steps you have proceeded until the whole faculty of the nation is braced up to the act of her own deliverance.

I found Ireland on her knees, I watched over her with an eternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift! spirit of Molyneux! your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation! in that new character I hail her! and bowing to her august presence, I say, Esto perpetua! She is no longer a wretched colony, returning thanks to her governor for his rapine, and to her king for his oppression ; nor is she now a squabbling, fretful sectary, perplexing her little wits, and firing her furious statutes with bigotry, sophis try, disabilities, and death, to transmit to posterity insignificance and war.

Look to the rest of Europe, and contemplate yourself, and be satisfied. Holland lives on the memory of past achievement; Sweden has lost her liberty; England has sullied her great name by an attempt to enslave her colonies. You are the only people,-you, of the nations in Europe, are now the only people who excite admiration, and in your present conduct you not only exceed the present generation, but you equal the past. I am not afraid to turn back and look antiquity in the face the revolution,-that great event, whether you call it ancient or mo. dern I know not, was tarnished with bigotry: the great deliverer (for such I must ever call the Prince of Nassau,) was blemished with oppression; he assented to, he was forced to assent to acts which deprived the Catholics of religious, and all the Irish of civil and commercial rights,

though the Irish were the only subjects in these islands who had fought in his defence. But you have sought liberty on her own principle: see the Presbyterians of Bangor petition for the freedom of the Catholics of Munster. You, with difficulties innumerable, with dangers not a few, have what your ancestors wished, but could not accomplish; and what your posterity may preserve, but will never equal: you have moulded the jarring elements of your country into a nation, and have rivalled those great and ancient commonwealths, whom you were taught to admire, and among whom you are now to be recorded: in this proceeding you had not the advantages which were common to other great countries; no monuments, no trophies, none of those outward and visible signs of greatness, such as inspire mankind, and connect the ambition of the age which is coming on with the example of that going off, and form the descent and concatenation of glory: no; you have not had any great act recorded among all your misfortunes, nor have you one public tomb to assemble the crowd, and speak to the living the language of integrity and freedom.

Your historians did not supply the want of monuments; on the contrary, these narrators of your misfortunes, who should have felt for your wrongs, and have punished your oppressors with oppression's natural scourges, the moral indignation of history, compromised with public villany and trembled; they excited your violence, they suppressed your provocation, and wrote in the chain which entrammelled their country. I am come to break that chain, and I congratulate my country, who, without any of the advantages I speak of, going forth as it were with nothing but a stone and a sling, and,what oppression could not take away, the favour of Heaven, accomplished her own redemption, and left you nothing to add and every thing to admire.

You want no trophy now; the records of Parliament are the evidence of your glory. I beg to observe, that the deliverance of Ireland has proceeded from her own right hand; I rejoice at it, for had the great requisition of your freedom proceeded from the bounty of England, that great work would have been defec

* The motion was lost by an overwhelming majority-but upon Mr. Fox's accession to office was renewed in the next month and carried unanimously, when Mr. Grattan made the Speech from which the extract is taken.

tive both in renown and security: it was necessary that the soul of the country should have been exalted by the act of her own redemption, and that England should withdraw her claim by operation of treaty, and not of mere grace and condescension; a gratuitous act of parliament, however express, would have been revocable, but the repeal of her claim under operation of treaty is not: in that case, the legislature is put in covenant, and bound by the law of nations, the only law that can legally bind Parliament: never did this country stand so high; England and Ireland treat ex æquo. Ireland transmits to the King her claim of right, and requires of the Parliament of England the repeal of her claim of power, which repeal the English Parliament is to make under the force of a treaty which depends on the law of nations, a law which cannot be repealed by the Parliament of England.

I rejoice that the people are a party to this treaty, because they are bound to preserve it. There is not a man of forty shillings freehold that is not associated in this our claim of right, and bound to die in its defence; cities, counties, associations, Protestants and Catholics; it seems as if the people had joined in one great national sacrament; a flame has descended from heaven on the intellect of Ireland, plays round her head, and encompasses her understanding with a consecrated glory.

There are some who think, and a few who declare, that the associations to which I refer are illegal: come, then, let us try the charge, and state the grievance. And, first, I ask, What were the grievances? an army imposed on us by another country, that army rendered perpetual; the privy-council of both countries made a part of our legislature; our legislature deprived of its originating and propounding power; another country exercising over us supreme legislative authority; that country disposing of our property by its judgments, and prohibiting our trade by its statutes: these were not grievances, but spoliations, which left you nothing. When you contended against them, you contended for the whole of your condition; when the minister asked, by what right? we refer him to our Maker: we sought our privileges by the right which we have to defend our property against a robber, our life against a murderer, our country against an invader,

whether coming with civil or military force,-a foreign army, or a foreign legislature. This is a case that wants no precedent; the revolution wanted no precedent: for such things arrive to reform & course of bad precedents, and, instead of being founded on precedent, become such: the gazing world, whom they come to save, begins by doubt and concludes by worship. Let other nations be deceived by the sophistry of courts. Ireland has studied politics in the lair of oppression, and, taught by suffering, comprehends the rights of subjects and the duty of kings. Let other nations imagine that subjects are made for the monarch, but we conceive that kings, and parliaments, like kings, are made for the subjects. The House of Commons, honourable and right honourable as it may be; the Lords, noble and illustrious as we pronounce them, are not original but derivative. Session after session they move their periodical orbit about the source of their being, the nation; even the King's Majesty must fulfil his due and tributary course round that great luminary; and created by its beam, and upheld by its attraction, must incline to that light, or go out of the system.

Ministers, we mean the ministers who have gone out, (I rely on the good intentions of the present), former ministers, I say, have put questions to us; we beg to put questions to them. They desired to know by what authority this nation has acted. This nation desires to know by what authority they have acted. By what authority did Government enforce the articles of war? By what authority does Government establish the post-office? By what authority are our merchants bound by the charter of the East India Company? By what authority has Ireland, for near one hundred years, been deprived of her export trade? By what authority are her peers deprived of their judicature? By what authority has that judicature been transferred to the peers of Great Britain, and our property in its last resort referred to the decision of a non-resident, unauthorized, and unconstitutional tribunal? Will ministers say it was the authority of the British Parliament? On what ground, then, do they place the question between the Government on one side, and the volunteer on the other? According to their own statement, the government has been occupied in superseding the lawgiver

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