cumstances which ought imperiously to have deterred us from the prosecution of it.-The moment of civil disturbance and division, when the necessity of military law is alleged by ministers, and acknowledged by parliament, seems ill calculated for ensuring the full and unequivocal con

even the supporters of the measure must confess it to be illusory and dangerous in the extreme. And to commit the parliament of Great Britain to the wisdom of a project which the Commons of Ireland have rejected, and to which the inhabitants of that kingdom are disinclined, appears to us a whimsical expedient for securing the connexion of the two countries, and consolidating the strength of the empire.

tranquillity were likely to be re-established in Ireland without some great measure of empire, and by the limited powers of a local and separate legislature? Did they think a general concession to the Catholics would tend to convey confidence and security to the great body of proprietors? Did they think a radical reform in the re-sent of the Irish people, without which, presentation would tend to assimilate the Irish to the British constitution, and thereby fasten the tie of connexion between them? Did they recommend the renewal of the attempt at compact, and conceive that the spirit which led to the rejection of that which was attempted in 1785, no longer existed? In short, during the whole of these discussions, in both countries, he had not heard of one singleindividual proposing anyone single planwhich he gave it as his opinion would have the effect of restoring peace and tranquillity to that divided country. The measure of union, though it had to combat much prejudice and much violence, certainly enjoyed a superiority to which no other could pretend, since it had already received the decided support of one of the two houses of the legislature, and of near one half of the other. And it was impos-power with unconstitutional and wanton sible for him to observe the comparative severity. moderation of the latter debates in the House of Commons, nor the addresses from Antrim, Galway, &c. without indulging a hope, that, by persevering with firmness and moderation until the passions of men should have somewhat subsided in that country, truth would triumph over prejudice, and patriotism over clamour. But if Ireland was determined to reject the plan offered to her, the presentation of the proposed address was essential for the purpose of making known to her and to the world what were the conditions on which we were willing to unite with her.

The question was then put upon the Address, and agreed to.

Protest against the Address relative to a Union with Ireland.] The following Protest was entered on the Journals:

"Dissentient.

1. "Because, the measure of a legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland, the policy of which is highly questionable, and the importance of which demands the most calm, dispassionate, and deliberate examination, is persisted in and urged forward in compliment to his majesty's ministers under cir

2. "Because, as no jealousy or divi sion has existed between the two legisla tures, the present dangers and discontents in Ireland cannot be attributed to the inde pendence of parliament, but must rather be considered as the bitter fruits of a coercive system of policy suggested by his majesty's advisers, and enforced under the sanction of the executive

3. Because, though the possibility of a different will in the two separate legisla tures cannot be controverted, yet possible inconveniences in remote and extreme cases from supposed legislative measures, or possible instances of additional embarrassment to the executive government, are no arguments for the subversion of a system in which no such inconveniences have been experienced, and no such difficulties encountered. For the conse quences of such reasoning would lead us to consolidate into one the different branches of our own excellent constitution; to remove all the checks which the jealousy of our ancestors have imposed on the executive government; to condemn whatever theory might suppose difficult, though practice had shown it to be easy; and to substitute hypothesis and specula. tion for history, fact, and experience.

4. Because the notion that a legislative union will either conciliate the affections of the discontented in Ireland, or furnish more effectual means for defeating the design of the enemy in that country, seems unsupported by reasoning, and in direct contradiction to analogy and experience. Were we to admit the beneficial conse quences of a union, yet, the benefits

which according to such hypothesis, are | Scotland, and that two rebellions broke likely to result to Ireland from the mea- out in that kingdom, subsequent to its sure, are, at least, progressive and distant, accomplishment. Farthermore, from what and can furnish, therefore, no reasonable information we have been able to procure hope of allaying immediate discontent, we observe with the deepest concern and suppressing actual rebellion, or defeating alarm, that its discussion in Ireland has designs already on foot. If, indeed, the already been attended with the most fear⚫ enemies of the connexion endeavoured to ful symptoms. From the increased effectuate a separation of the two king- powers with which it has recently been doms, by sowing jealousies and dissen- deemed necessary to arm the executive tions between the two parliaments) as power, we cannot but infer, that the proswas the case in Scotland, immediately pect of an incorporating union has failed previous to the union) the measure pro- to conciliate the minds of the disaffected; posed would manifestly be an effectual, it and from the ferment occasioned by its might be represented as the only, remedy discussion, it is evident that all other parfor the evil but if it be true that their ties in Ireland are alienated or divided, and object is to disseminate jealousy, and fo- the means of resistance, in case of insurment discontent, not between the distant rection or foreign invasion, thereby matelegislatures and governments of England rially weakened. We thought it thereand Ireland, but between the people and fore more prudent in this moment of parliament, between the governed and alarm to desist from the prosecution of a government of that country; and if measure, which might become a fresh by representing their legislature as the subject of complaint, and a new source of corrupt agent of British ministers, and discontent and division. And we were slavish engine of British tyranny, they more disposed to seek for the re-estahave succeeded in alienating a large por- blishment of mutual confidence in the tion of his majesty's subjects; and if it be adoption of conciliatory laws, in the farther true, as stated in the report of the removal of odious disabilities, in the recommittees of secrecy of the Irish parlia- dress of grievances, and the operation of ment, that the misrepresentations of a few a milder system of policy on the affecindividuals have been found sufficient to tions of the Irish people, than in any seduce the allegiance of one whole pro- experiment of theory and nominal union vince in Ireland; we are indeed at a loss of governments. to conceive how the danger of such designs is to be averted, or the force of such misrepresentations diminished, by a measure, which reduces the number of representatives of the Irish people, transfers the legal organ of their will out of the bosom of their own country, and annihilates all independent and exclusive authority in that kingdom. An examination of the immediate consequences which the union formerly produced in Scotland, and a contemplation of the recent effects of its discussion in Ireland, suggest yet stronger reasons for doubting its efficacy either in healing discontents, or furnishing the means of resistance to any attempt of the enemy. We learn from the most authentic documents of those times, that in Scotland its agitation produced disorder and tumult; that six years after it passed, nearly all the Scotch peers voted for its dissolution, and founded that vote on the discontents it had occasioned; that it remained for a long period a subject of sullen discontent; that a promise of its dissolution was consideredby the agents of the pretender as advantageous to his cause in

5. Because at a time when the danger of innovation has been deemed a sufficient pretext for the continuation of abuses, the suspension of improvement, and the preservation of a defective representation of the people, we cannot regard without jealousy and alarm an innovation of direct contrary tendency, viz. the introduction of a number of members into the British parliament, from a legislature, one branch of which has acknowledged the imperfection of its own constitution; and against the other branch of which the sale of peerages have been publicly alleged, and as publicly offered to be proved. And, however invidious it might be to cite any example in confirmation of such opinion, we are not so blind to matters of notoriety, or so deaf to the lessons of experience, as not to apprehend from a measure of this nature an enormous increase of the influence of the crown; neither could we perceive, either in the present temper of the Irish people inflamed by civil animosity and exasperated by recent rebellion, or in the general moderation of his majesty's present advisers, any thing to allay

1

April 22. The House proceeded to take the said Address into consideration. The Address having been read twice, Mr. Pitt moved, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Address to be presented to his Majesty." Upon which,

Some of those objections may have seemed plausible or ingenious; scarcely any, I think, have been weighty or substantial; none, I am sure, of sufficient weight to counterbalance the numerous benefits which there is such reason to expect from the adoption of the measure. But they have been frequently suited to meet those passions and prejudices, which naturally exist, or have been artfully ex cited in our sister kingdom; and, if we feel it our duty, to recommend the proposed incorporation to our fellow subjects there, we owe it to them and to ourselves to spare no pains in the endeavour to remove, by dispassionate reasoning and cool deliberation, such obstacles as may have appeared to them, or any number of them, to stand in the way of what most of us here, I believe, consider as material for our interests and essential to theirs.

To those who have attended to the va rious modes of resistance to the proposal of a union, which have been resorted to by different persons, two circumstances must have occurred as very remarkable. One has been so well expressed in the reMr. Sylvester Douglas rose and said: solutions of the grand jury of the county Mr. Speaker-I took occasion on a former of the city of Cork, that I should do it inday to express my humble hope, that if a justice not to introduce the mention of it regular opportunity should again occur, in the very language they have used; the House would permit me to lay before" Whilst we lament," say they," that them some thoughts on this great subject, which have appeared to me worthy of their attention; and to explain some of the grounds on which my opinion has been formed in favour of a union with Ireland. Nobody to whom I am known, will, I am persuaded, impute to me the presumptuous folly of imagining that I have it in my power to improve on what those men of transcendent talents, and eminent political wisdom and experience, who have taken the principal share in the former debates, have advanced on the leading points of this question. But it is a question of such extent, that it may fairly be thought that even yet several important topics remain for consideration, and some new views of those which have been already discussed. It has been for a considerable length of time before the public in both kingdoms: it has given rise to various arguments in both Houses of this and the other parliament: and upon every fresh occasion, additional lights have been thrown upon it, and new difficulties and objections have been raised, by the fertility and eagerness of contest and opposition.

any difference of opinion should exist in this kingdom upon so important a ques tion, we cannot but remember how unanimous the rebellious and traitorous ene mies of the country are in their reprobation of the measure." The plan of the United Irishmen, with the assistance of the inveterate foe of the British empire and constitution, is, to effect a separation between Great Britain and Ireland. It is natural, therefore, that they should dread nothing so much as any measure which they must look upon as fatal to that favourite object. That separation is their favourite object, we have many incontes tible proofs, but it is sufficient for me now to refer to the declaration of their founder, Tone, subjoined to the Report of the Secret Committee of the Irish House of Lords in 1797; and the detestation of a union, which on that account the same class of men have always expressed is equally notorious. The furious declamations of M Nevin, Lewins, and others, have been more than once referred to in this place: and within not many weeks from the present moment, some of those self convicted traitors have contrived to publish

to the world new libels on the government | constituent body, or the electors, have no and constitution of their country, their such authority; they have not, by the pracmain view in which has manifestly been, tice or true theory of our constitution, to co-operate to this particular end with any power of deliberation on any question those who, though of a very different whatever; their only business as electors description, and acting undoubtedly from being that of selecting and nominating motives of mistaken patriotism, have those whom they think the fittest persons exerted their talents and influence to to exercise that share of legislation which counteract and retard that happy conso- is vested in the third estate of parliament: lidation of the empire which his ma- the act of the election is the beginning jesty's paternal goodness has recom- and end of their functions; the latent pomended to the consideration of both his litical rights of the people at large, whatparliaments. ever they may be, have not been delegated to them; and those gentlemen, on the other side, who are the most strenuous advocates against a union, would, I should think, be very unwilling to devolve that authority which is denied to the elected, on the elective body, as now constituted; since, in their opinion, they ought to be deprived of the very elective franchise itself, by what they call a reform of parliament; the scheme of such reform being, in many instances literally, and virtually in all, to deprive the present electors of that franchise.

The other circumstance is, that the opposers of union have almost all endeavoured to convince us, that the case of the incorporation of Scotland and England in 1707, is not in any degree applicable on the present occasion. I think there is considerable dexterity, though perhaps not a great deal of candour, in this attempt. In all great political operations, experience and historical precedent are the best and safest guides. Those gentlemen have, therefore, justly thought they should have a better chance of gain ing their end, if they could induce us to shut our eyes against history, and wander with them in the obscure mazes of theory and speculation. Their ingenuity might then, perhaps, bewilder and perplex us; whereas, if we recur to that memorable event, its similarity to what is now proposed, both in principle and in all its most characteristic features, is so great, that they naturally feel it furnishes, by its complete success, after the trial of a century, the strongest and most irresistible refutation of their arguments.

In the first and preliminary point, for instance, of the question of union, that transaction is most especially applicable, being the direct case of a national decision on the right and competency of parliament. I will not enter at large into the general argument concerning the extraordinary powers of the supreme legislature of a country. It has been amply and ably treated in several of the prior stages of the present business, in this House. If the parliament, in our representative government, is not competent to treat of, and conclude an incorporated union, there is no authority which is; and, consequently, a legitimate union, in such governments, never could take place. The

Arthur O'Connor's Letter to lord Castle. reagh.-Demonstration, &c. ascribed to Dr. M'Nevin.

But if the electors cannot deliberate and decide on such a measure, much less can the people at large; who never, I believe, in the smallest state, or most com plete democracy, have exercised, in fact, by universal individual suffrage, deliberative, judicial, or legislative authority. Yet to maintain that the constitutional legislature of a country has not the right of doing certain acts, however clearly beneficial to that country, without a previous special commission from the mass of the nation, leads immediately to the false and mischievous principle of the direct sovereignty of the people, and to that equally mischievous fiction to which it has given rise, viz. that an original compact between the governors and governed is the only lawful foundation of government. Indeed, to resort to the elementary parts of a nation, the numerical aggregate of individuals composing it, for authority to form an union, would be a complete admission of such sovereignty; as the terms and conditions with which this numerical mass might choose to accompany that delegation of power, would be an exemplification of such original compact. But what sort of philosophy is that, which traces the foundation of all political phenomena to a fact which no history shows ever to have existed, which the consideration of the human character, and the daily trans. actions, and past and present situations of

life, demonstrate to be, and always to have been impossible, and every attempt to realize which, either by the Jacquerie in ancient France, the Wat Tylers and Jack Straws in England, or the modern Jacobins, has proved as pernicious and destructive, as to suppose the possibility of its actual existence, is foolish and absurd. The fatal consequences of such attempts to restore, as it is called, to the people the sovereignty they are imagined to have farmed out, as it were, to their rulers, subject to divers claims of forfeiture and re-entry, has indeed been too well illustrated by the late eventful history of a neighbouring kingdom, for us here, or our

| fellow subjects in Ireland, to require much argument to convince us of its folly and wickedness. It has in that country overturned the throne of the monarch and the altars of God: it has sanctioned murder, parricide, and regicide; and has taught every illiterate peasant to consider himself as a fit candidate for supreme power, the sovereign of his sovereign, and the lawgiver of mankind—

"Ergo, regibus occisis, subversa jacebat Pristina majestas soliorum, et sceptra superba Res itaque ad summam fæcem turbasque redibat."*

I agree with a person justly eminent, when he says, " that it is dangerous in a popu lar assembly to state that there are points where the powers of the legislature end, and those of the people at large begin." Indeed, I know of no point where a legi timate constitutional power in the people at large begins: there may be some very special cases to which that of the legisla ture cannot reach: and in which, accord. ing to my conception, when any measure becomes necessary and unavoidable, not the power, i. e. any rightful power of the people, but the dissolution of the constitu tion and government, will begin; from which anarchy it must be left, in such cases, to chance, to the circumstances of the times, and to the prudence and virtue of individuals possessing influence, either personal or from situation, to extricate the nation. It is indeed delicate and dangerous wantonly to moot such sort of cases; no judge of human nature, who is a friend to his country, ever will; whatever may be his particular creed and party on matters fairly debateable, and open to a safe difference in opinion.

*It has been unfortunate for the world, that so great and upright a man as Mr. Locke (led astray by the circumstances of the times in which he lived, and the zeal of controversy) should have been the patron and advocate of this baneful, but, in his hands, too plausible and specious doctrine. Locke's fate has indeed been singular. He was a good subject and a pious Christian. Yet, as his theory of government has served for a basis to the destructive systems of the Condorcets, Priestleys, and Paines, so his metaphysical principles have become the ground-work of the vain wisdom and false philosophy which began by denying the existence of the material world, and proceeded, in the writings of the late Mr. Hume and others, to extend that wild scepticism of an ingenious and well-intentioned prelate (bishop Berkeley) to the disbelief of spirit also, of the immortal nature of man, and the being of God himself. This remark has been, in a great measure, occasioned by my recollection of a truly great philosopher, to whose early lessons and kindness I look back with tenderness and pride, who was among the first to prove that the system adopted by Locke concerning ideas, tended, by its natural consequence, to those of Berkeley and Hume; There are, however, cases of another but who, in announcing that opinion to the description, which may be more freely world, anxiously disclaimed every wish or in- discussed, to which also the supreme power tention to disparage the talents of those, the of the legislature (in our constitution of fallacy and danger of whose doctrines he thought he could demonstrate, and every view the parliament) cannot extend; but which, of arrogating to himself any peculiar sagacity being of a negative kind, and not requiring and discernment on that account. Indeed, any measure to be taken or act done, do those who remember him, know that there not connect themselves with the notion of never was learning and wisdom more free from any necessary dissolution of the frame of arrogance and presumption than his. "A the government. They are, in truth, of traveller," says he," of good judgment, may such a sort, that, on their correct analysis, mistake his way, and be led unawares into a it will be found, that the idea of the apwrong track; and, while the road is fair before him, may go on without suspicion, and be fol- plication of that power involves either lowed by others; but when it ends in a pre- physical or moral impossibility, or a nacipice, it requires no peculiar degree of wis- tural contradiction in the terms of the dom and penetration to know he has gone wrong, nor perhaps to find out what misled him."--Dr. Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind, p 23.

* Lucret. lib. v, ver. 1135.

+ Speech of the right hon. John Foster, p. 108.