any other mode of union, might or might not, under different circumstances, be conducive to the strengthening and consolidating of the empire. He must, however, remark, that the chancellor of the exchequer had, with his usual perspicuity, distinguished two very dissimilar modes, one a federal, the other an incorporating union. The former admitted of much variety, in the nature, scope, and extent of its provisions and stipulations. The latter was more simple, as it was more compliant. Of the former description, were the ulterior measures, which were supposed to have been intimated in the prospective resolution of 1782. Of the same description were the commercial propositions, introduced under the aus way for the artifices of the agitators to operate with more effect on the minds of the people. Above all things, we should not hastily give credit to the cry, which had been no less wickedly than falsely, attempted to be raised, that it drew its origin in any considerable degree from religious animosities. He had taken some trouble to inform himself of the truth. In the north, he knew on the most indubitable authority, that hardly a single Catholic was concerned in the insurrection. All of that religious persuasion were almost to a man, loyal and zealous in behalf of that constitution, from the full participation of which they are to this moment excluded. The disaffection in that quarter, was in a great measure, confined to the Protestant dissenters, the de-pices of the right hon. gentleman in 1785. scendants of those soldiers, whom Oliver Of the latter description was the plan on Cromwell settled in the lands of which he which he now stood committed, in the had dispossessed the ancient proprietors. face of his country, and which he had soAmong the insurgents in Kildare, Catho- lemnly engaged to make it the great oblics and Protestants were mingled inject of his political existence to effect. nearly the same proportions which they Should any scheme of union come recombear to each other in the general propor-mended by the full, the free, the unintion of the country: but in their language, and their pretexts, nothing of a religious aspect and complexion was discernible. In Wexford alone, the rebellion did assume that character, because in that county and the adjacent districts, party violence had previously run high between the opposite sects; yet even there, the five principal leaders who suffered under the just severity of the law, were all members of the established church. Of whatever kind were the local discontents of the people, the conspirators, with malignant dexterity, wrought them to their purpose; and there was one thing which generally inflamed and ulcerated the feelings of the lower classes, -the system of rigour and coercion, which, it is now proved by the solemn investigation of the two Houses in Ireland, had long preceded that treasonable arming of the conspirators, which has been falsely argued as the justification of so doubtful a departure from the great standing rules of civil policy. It was not his intention to follow the noble lord into his panegyric on the measure itself. It was not necessary in that stage, it did not seem to be necessary in any stage of the business, that he and others, who like him, looked upon the time and the temper lately manifested in the sister kingdom, to be insuperable objections, should debate whether this, or fluenced, the unequivocal consent and approbation of the Irish parliament and the Irish people, he would give it an attentive and dispassionate consideration: nevertheless, he must fairly acknowledge, that he did entertain very great doubts indeed whether, under any circumstances, an incorporating union would be expedient for the general weal. He certainly acceded to the sentiment of the right hon. gentleman, that it was impossible to speak as a true Englishman, without speaking also as a true Irishman, or as an Irishman, without holding at the same time, the language of an Englishman; yet it was the duty of each to consult in the first place, the interests of that country to which he immediately belonged; and of the sister kingdom only in the second place, in so much as through that the common interests of the whole empire may be affected. Looking, therefore, not with the narrow jealousy of local prejudice, but as a member of the empire, at some of the commercial arrangements contained in the intended resolutions, he could not but warn the House and the country against speculating too rashly on the beneficial consequences so munificently promised, from the circulation of British capital in Ireland. Cork was the only city, which had hitherto declared in favour of the union. What did this indicate? Was it not that Cork, above all other places, ex his object to examine, whether any one of these classes prodominated in the minorities of that House. With this view he had diligently scrutinized the lists, which are sometimes taken on momentary questions, when on both sides there is the greatest muster of strength. He had checked those lists again by striking out those who commonly voted on the other side, and inserting others who had been absent, but whose sentiments he knew. And in what did his inquiries terminate? In the conviction, he had almost said in the demonstration, that if any one sort of representation should be preferred to the exclusion of the rest, and a new parliament be chosen under such a new right of suffrage, there would be no material alteration in the votes of that House. pected to profit by the measure? Would, he placed all that remained. It was then it then be so clearly useful for the empire at large, that any considerable portion of British trade should be transferred to Cork, and perhaps to Kinsale, to Limerick, and other ports on the coasts of Munster, where that province contracts itself, as it approaches the south western point of the island? He did not wish to deprive Ireland of any advantage, which she might draw from the natural opportunities of her situation, improved by her own proper resources; but would it be wise, artificially to collect and accumulate the merchandizes and wealth of Great Britain in a distant extremity of the king's domestic dominions, in a small space, peculiarly accessible on different sides, incapable of being sufficiently fortified for defence, and more immediately exposed to the attack from the principal naval station of the enemy? Was there a military man who would choose to place his magazines in an outpost similarly circumstanced? This branch of the argument he did not mean at present to push so far as it might easily be pressed; but he did throw it out as not undeserving the serious attention of the House. That part of the proposed union which touched the constitution of parliament, he considered as of much higher importance and more anxious concern. The endeavours, which had been so frequently made, to render the representation of the people, the ancient foundation on which that House was built, and on which it had stood secure for ages, had sometimes induced him to analyse and study the different parts of which the august fabric is composed. It existed, such as it was and such as it had become, from the concurring operations of wisdom, fortune, and time, combining all interests of the community in a manner reducible to no exact rule of theory, yet affording a practical result, that corresponded with the most perfect theory to a wonderful degree of precision He had found it to be so in the present parliament. He had divided the whole representation into four classes; the first, of counties; the second, of cities, county towns, and other places of the largest population and most extensive franchises;the third, of boroughs containing such a number of votes as to render them generally, what are called, open boroughs, though some of them may be accidentally liable to particular influence; and in the fourth class Now, would the conclusion be the same, if one hundred Irish members should be added to the representation? He would answer by acknowledging, that in the estimate which he had made, he had found himself under the necessity of wholly omitting the members from Scotland. Why did he so? Because they were found to go, almost unanimously, with government. It was far from his intention to disparage the representatives of that part of Great Britain. He thought it in some measure their duty to pursue that conduct. It was so that other minor interests and local connexions acted in that House; it was so that men ever would act, who were sent, few among many, with the charge of protecting and benefitting any distinct and separate body of the people. They could only compromise with power, which they were not able to resist. They must obtain the support which they wanted, by giving that which they could themselves bestow. Would Ireland, then, be in such a situation, as would probably induce her hundred members to maintain the same general concert among themselves, and throw their weight into the same scale? Undoubtedly she would. Many very important regulations in commerce and revenue were to be settled, at first only for a limited period, and would return to be discussed anew from time to time in the united parliament. The representatives from Ireland would be impelled by the force of circumstances to follow in the track of those from Scotland. The latter, in his opinion, did not form a body greater than, in the present debility of all the old governments, it might be useful to the public service, or at least consistent with the public safety, to leave under the influence of the crown. But would any man venture to assert, that the question would remain the same if a hundred more of a similar description were to be thrown into the number. And his alarms on this head were not a little increased when he recollected what was the influence of the crown at present in the sister kingdom, extending to many more than the proposed addition to the Commons of Great Britain. Suppose, however, that the new members should take a course contrary to all common experience of similar bodies. They were justly allowed by the chancellor of the exchequer to be of a nation distinguished for abilities. Lures too had been thrown out to their ambition by a splendid display of imperial honours and imperial power, which they might attain by those arts which lead to pre-eminence in free states. And certainly they were by no means deficient in the great popular talent of eloquence. But if they-But there was one point of view in should hereafter exercise it within these walls, in any degree corresponding with the example which they have lately given in their own proper theatre, where they continued in very animated debate for little less than the complete circle of a day and night, he was apprehensive that we might find the public business a little impeded in its progress. Put even the most favourable case; suppose them to divide on one side and the other, nearly in the same relative proportion in which English members now espouse the opposite parties; suppose them not to protract the debates with one single observation; yet would any man practically acquainted with that House deny, that the consequent difference of the actual numbers in every ma jority would have a very different effect in public opinion. The House, to any purpose of a national council expressing the general will, would no longer be the same; its character would be changed; the confidence of the people would be hazarded; and a new argument, infinitely stronger than any which had yet been produced in favour of innovation, would be furnished to those, who, some honestly, and some as a pretext for worse designs, wished to alter the parliamentary constitution of these realms. within doors and without, our attention was always called to the happy effect of the union with Scotland. But the noble lord had used that topic rather unfairly, because, while he had attributed the prosperity of Scotland during the current century to her having ceased to be an inde pendent kingdom, he had denied that the rapid prosperity of Ireland, since the year 1782, was at all to be ascribed to her having then become an independent kingdom. Dr. Laurence gave it as his opinion, that one assertion was as good as the other, and that neither of them was satisfactory. It was an old trite fallacy, long since exploded in the schools, to reason, that whatever happened after some particular event, was produced by that event. We must go much deeper into an investigation of all the circumstances attending the two countries before we can justly get to a conclusion, that the union of one with England, or the independence of the other has occasioned, what we hear of both with equal delight. In every discussion of the present measure, in all that had been said, and all that had been written to recommend it, which he would advise ministers seriously to look at the union with Scotland. We were then engaged, as we are now, in a war against the ambition of France. But then not only was the marine of the enemy crippled, his military power also was broken; he was reduced to the defence of his own territories against the victorious allies under the conduct of the illustrious Marlborough. Mr. Dundas appearing to express some dissent across the House, Dr. Laurence acknowledged that he did not come prepared for this debate, but believed himself to be correct. In 1705, when the treaty which led to the union was set on foot, though Marlborough had but commenced that brilliant career, which shook the throne of Louis 14th to its foundation, yet he had gained the first decisive battles which fixed the fortune of the war. Nevertheless such were the discontents and heart-burnings which the union excited in North Britain, that when the French, encouraged by their intelligence from that quarter, soon after made a feeble attempt to invade it, had they not accidentally missed the op portunity of landing at Leith, it was confessed at the time that they would without difficulty have made themselves masters of the whole country. Compare our situation now. No man was less inclined than himself to undervalue our late splendid victories, than which none shone more brightly in the annals of our naval glory: but he would not dangerously delude his country with the hope of a speedy and fortunate issue to the present tremendous contest. We must persevere with steady fortitude, because till the enemy had manifested very different principles and very different dispositions from any which had yet appeared, in no other than vigorous counsels was there either honour or safety. We had, however, hitherto achieved nothing that could establish our security. Had we now, as at the time of the union with Scotland, triumphant allies on the continent? Did the league against the gigantic power of France now, as then, receive every day new accessions of strength? Were our foes now, as then, exhausted with recruiting their defeated and dispirited armies for the defence of their own frontiers? The contrary of all this was too notoriously the fact. Europe still trembled at the genius of France. The grand alliance which had for a short time attempted to stem the torrent, had been dissolved in its own weakness. The requisitions of the hostile republic still forced thousands and hundreds of thousands into the field for the destruction of the surrounding states and she still possessed in her own ports and those of the confederated republics and dependent monarchies, the wrecks of a navy sufficient to waft over the troops, whose lives their tyrannical masters were ever ready to lavish on any desperate enterprise. Repeated attempts had been made upon Ireland with various success; and we had every reason to believe, that those attempts would be again and again renewed. Would it not then be sound policy, while we repressed with a strong and steady hand every discontent that assumed the appearance of insurrection, at the same time to conciliate, as far as we could, the affections of the sister kingdom? Ought we not at least in common prudence to abstain from adding new discontents to those which already were too ripe? But what was the peculiar character of the present question? The agitation of it had excited, and the continuance of it would perpetuate new discontents;-discontents which began to operate in the community there, just at the very point, where the operation of the old discontents terminated. The lower classes in Ireland, it must not be concealed, were too generally disaffected from a multitude of concurring causes. But the laté rebel lion had been crushed, by a junction of all the higher orders of every religious persuasion, and by the loyalty and energy of the yeomanry and other volunteer forces, whose meritorious exertions had received a testimony no less just than eloquent in the panegyric pronounced upon them by the chancellor of the exchequer, and whose own courage alone, he had confessed, might have ultimately succeeded in repelling the dangers with which they were threatened, though after a more severe struggle, and a longer dura. tion of confusion and slaughter. Yet they, whohad been thus highly extolled, were the very persons who were now more imme diately disgusted. Above all, he must remind the House, that there existed in Ireland a powerful party, the principles. of which he did not approve; and the violence of which, indeed,' he considered as having had a most mischievous effect in driving the Catholic peasantry into the arms of the conspirators, yet which professed the most ardent zeal for the connexion with Great Britain, and on that connexion built their own political influ ence and importance;-he alluded to what is called the Orange party. That party, however, had been the foremost, and the loudest in the cry against the union; while on the other hand, no one considerable body of Catholics, or of any other description had been gained to its support. In such a situation of that distracted country, with so decided an expression of the general sense against any union, and with such pernicious effects following from the bare mention of the measure, he, who, without going into any question of abstract competency, thought it to be peculiarly a measure, which should have in some way or other the direct or the implied concurrence of the people as well as the parliament, and who believed it to be so dangerous to our own constitution, as that under any circumstances he should approve the actual discussion of it with fear and trembling, could not hesitate to give his vote against proceeding any farther in the consideration of his majesty's message. For these reasons he should oppose the speaker's leaving the chair, for some of these reasons also he should stop there, and decline giving his voice for the preliminary resolutions, of which an hon. gentleman had given notice. He could not be supposed to object to them in point of principle, when the noble lord vinced as I am of the impropriety of conhimself had found them so far unobjec- tinuing to discuss it here. This considetionable. But if they should be carried, ration I should have hoped would have and the committee should then pause, had some weight with the right hon. genthere would stand on the records of the tleman, and have taught him not to perHouse, some declarations which, however sist in the pledge which he so boldly gave moderate, pointed towards a union; and in the course of the first debate on this there would appear sufficiently intelligible subject. The right hon. gentleman detraces of a censure on the conduct of go-clared, that to accomplish a union of the vernment in the late dismissals, which, he two kingdoms should be the object of his trusted, would yet be retracted on the life. The House will, however, do well one side, and forgotten on the other, that to pause before they advance farther. nothing might remain to rankle, and keep The question now before us is, whether alive the animosities, to which the speech we are willing to second the pledge which from the throne had unhappily given birth the right hon. gentleman has given? The in the sister-kingdom. right hon. gentleman has before now duped the people with his pledges, and he may, perhaps, think proper at last to abandon this. Be that as it may, nothing could so much tend to increase the evils which at present exist in Ireland, as this House sanctioning the present pledge of the right hon. gentleman. The question being put, That his majesty's Message be referred to the consideration of a committee of the whole House, the House divided: Tellers. YEAS NOES (Lord Hawkesbury Mr. Douglas SMr. Sheridan :} {Mr. St. Andrew St. John} 140 15 The House accordingly resolved itself into the committee: Mr. Douglas in the chair. The resolutions having been read in the committee, the House was resumed, and the committee obtained leave to sit again on Thursday. Feb. 7. On the order of the day being read for the House to resolve itself into a committee, to consider further of his Majesty's Message respecting the proposed union with Ireland, The effect of that pledge must be considerable on the people of Ireland. It will produce much irritation, and inflame all those discontents which have already occasioned so much misery in that country. If adopted by this House, the mischief would be still greater. It is difficult to conceive what object he proposes to himself by proceeding in this measure. What advantage will his argument of the necessity of a union receive from the House joining in his pledge, when the Irish House of Commons has already decided against it? If the House sanctions the project of the right hon. gentleman Mr. Sheridan said:-Having on the the two Houses of Commons of Great two former occasions, in which the present Britain and Ireland will be placed in opsubject was under discussion, trespassed position to each other, and the situation a good deal on the attention of the of these kingdoms will be more alarming, ' House, I feel it incumbent upon me to than that in which any two countries protake up as little of their time as possible fessing amity for each other ever before now. I shall therefore only urge a few of stood. Does the right hon. gentleman the many reasons which might be ad- not know, that while he declares his devanced in support of the resolutions I in- termination to persist in this measure, the tend to move. Indeed, I think it the Irish will fancy they can penetrate the more incumbent on me to say less at pre- means to which he will resort to carry it? sent than I otherwise should, because If he do not succeed on the present occathough at the commencement of the de- sion, they must be convinced that he only bates on this measure I had the singula- waits for a moment when Ireland shall be rity of standing alone in opposition to the more weak to carry his favourite project, right hon. gentleman's project, yet several and that intimidation and corruption are gentlemen knowing the irritation pro- the engines he proposes to use. duced in the public mind by the agita- ought to be recollected, that the Irish tion of this question, and knowing the parliament do not look upon their conmarked disapprobation the mere sugges-nexion with us as a boon-they claim to tion of the measure has received from the be independent. If, then, the right hon. Irish parliament, are now as much con- gentleman has sincerely pledged himself, [VOL. XXXIV.] * [Y] But it |