try, of the first ability as a statesman, who, in the year 1783, did most emphatically declare his opinion as a cabinet minister, that the existence of legitimate government in Ireland depended on the dispersion of a military convention, then assembled for the reform of parliament, and on the indignant rejection of any proposition which they might presume to make upon the subject. In that convention I will venture to say there was not a single rebel. There was not a member of it who would not willingly have shed his blood in the defence of his sovereign and of the constitution. But I did then agree with that right honourable gentleman, that there must be an end of all legitimate government, if political claims are to be advanced at the point of the bayonet; and if I did at that period refuse to listen to a proposition for parliamentary reform, made to the house of commons by a military convention, composed of very worthy gentlemen, who had been giddily betrayed into such an act of indiscretion, I will not now listen to much more extravagant claims pressed upon me under the terrour of impending rebellion. If the conciliatory system recommended by the noble lord is to be debated on its intrinsick merits, let me advise him to apply to the directory of the Irish union in the first instance. Let the directory withdraw their minister plenipotentiary from Paris; let them dissolve their revolutionary government at home; let them deliver up their cannon and pikes which have heretofore escaped the vigilance of civil and military officers; let them withdraw their emissaries who have been sent forth to seduce the people from their allegiance, and absolve them from the treasonable engagements with which they have been seduced; and let them then submit their claims and their grievances to calm discussion by the legislature.

I will once more appeal to the noble lord, and call upon him to wave all vague and general questions, and to state distinctly the grievance, if it exists, of which the people of Ireland can with justice complain against the British government, the Bri

tish parliament, or the British nation; or against the government or parliament of their own country. In 1779 they demanded a free trade, and it was granted to them. In 1782 they were called upon to state the measure of their grievances, and the redress which they demanded; and redress was granted to the full extent of their demands. In 1783 they were dissatisfied with the redress which they had pointed out, and acknowledged to be complete and satisfactory, and it was extended to the terms of their new demand. In 1785 they demanded a commercial treaty with Great Britain, and she made them a fair and liberal offer which they were pleased to reject with childish folly. In 1789 they demanded a place bill, a pension bill, and a responsibility bill, as necessary to secure the constitution established in Great Britain and Ireland in 1688, and renewed in Ireland in 1782, which they pledged themselves to support to the last drop of their blood. They had their place bill, and their pension bill, and their responsibility bill, and much more than they had ever demanded upon that score. For his majesty was pleased to surrender his hereditary revenue, and to accept a civil establishment for his life, by which parliament was enabled to make a general appropriation of the revenues, and to limit the crown in granting pensions; and his majesty was also pleased to put the office of lord treasurer into commission: And by these regulations they obtained the same security for the constitution as established at the revolution in 1688, which the people of Great Britain enjoy, and at the time when this security was given to them, the parliament of Great Britain repealed and explained the British navigation laws by which we were prohibited from exporting the produce of the British colonies and plantations from this country to Great Britain, a boon of all others the most essential to our foreign trade, for by it we have the certain issue of the British market for any surplus of plantation goods imported into Ireland above our own consumption. About the same period every disability which had affected Irish papists was removed, save a restriction in the use of fire-arms, which extends only to the lowest order of

the people; and sober and thinking men might reasonably have hoped that the stock of grievances was exhausted, and that they might have been allowed some short respite from popular ferment. In this expectation, however, we have been deceived, and when every other topick of discontent had failed, the government and constitution, as established at the revolution, has been discovered by the gentlemen who pledged themselves, in 1789, to defend and maintain it to the last drop of their blood, to be a slavish monopoly, inconsistent with the civil and religious liberties of the people. And is the noble lord so credulous in this instance as to suppose that if this new project should succeed, and the slavish monopoly of the revolution was abolished, the account of grievances would be closed-Uno avulso non deficit alter, & simili frondescit Virga metallo.

If the noble lord wishes to know the genuine source of ostensible Irish grievances, he will be enabled to trace it to some of his political friends and connexions in Great Britain and Ireland. The genuine source of Irish complaint against the British government is, that they will not second the ambitious views of some gentlemen who claim an exclusive right to guide the publick mind, and to monopolize to themselves and their dependants the power and patronage of the crown. The genuine cause of complaint against the British cabinet is, that they will not suffer these gentlemen to erect an aristocratick power in Ireland which shall enable them to dictate to the crown and the people; which shall enable them to direct and control the administration of Great Britain, by making the government of this country impracticable by any but their political friends and allies. Upon what just grounds these arrogant pretensions are advanced, I have not as yet been enabled to discover. I am willing to give the noble lord full credit for the sincerity of his professions, and to believe that his object is to tranquillize this giddy and distracted country, and therefore I will take the liberty most earnestly to advise him not to renew the strange exaggerated statements which he has been in the habit of making on

Irish affairs in the British house of lords, where they can have no other effect than mischief. Let me advise him also most earnestly to exert the influence which his high name and character must give him with his political connexions in Great Britain, to induce them to confine their political warfare to the theatre of their own country, and to cease to dabble in dirty Irish faction. It is one great misfortune of this country that the people of England know less of it, than they know perhaps of any other nation in Europe. Their impressions I do verily believe to be received from newspapers, published for the sole purpose of deceiving them. There is not so volatile nor so credulous a nation in Europe as the Irish. The people are naturally well disposed, but are more open to seduction than any man would credit, who had not lived amongst them. If I am to speak without disguise, civilisation has not made any considerable progress amongst us, and therefore the kingdom of Ireland is, of all the nations of Europe, the most dangerous to tamper with, or to make experiments upon. Her present disturbed and distracted state has certainly been the consequence of a series of experiments practised upon her for a course of years. If the gentlemen of Ireland who have a permanent interest in the safety of the state, could be prevailed upon to adjourn their political quarrels and resentments to a period when they might be renewed, without endangering every thing which is worth preserving in society, and to unite against the common enemy, I should feel no manner of apprehension for the event of the contest in which we are engaged, with foreign and domestick enemies. But whilst we are divided, and men of rank and character are found ready to hazard every thing for the possible success of little paltry personal objects, the crisis becomes awful indeed. If Ireland is to be tranquillized, the first step towards it must be, to crush rebellion. No lenity will appease the factious rancour of modern Irish reformers, nor will any measure of conciliation satisfy them short of a pure democracy, established by the influence, and guarantied by the power of the French republick.

MR. PITT'S SPEECH,

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 3, 1800, ON A MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS TO THE THRONE, APPROVING OF THE ANSWERS RETURNED TO THE COMMUNICATIONS FROM FRANCE, RELATIVE TO A NEGOTIATION FOR PEACE.

As soon as the "wily Corsican" had usurped the throne of his murdered sovereign, it became his policy to conclude at least a temporary peace, that he might the more speedily recruit the exhausted strength of France, and fix those arrangements by which security was to be given to his own "bad eminence" and violently acquired authority. With this design, overtures of peace were made to England in a letter highly conciliatory, which he wrote himself to the king. They were not, however, accepted. The answer to the letter by lord Grenville, then secretary of state, expressed as the ground of the refusal to negotiate, a distrust of the stability of the existing government of France, but at the same time declared, that whenever a prospect of a lasting peace should be afforded, the king would most cheerfully concert with his allies the means of effecting it.

The propositions of the Chief Consul being laid before parliament, the rejection of them was vehemently attacked by the opposition, and as warmly vindicated by the ministry. The two distinguished rivals, Pitt and Fox, never appeared to greater advantage than in that discussion. Their splendid speeches