predeceffors, to fix months. TheBritish Parliament, in a former feffion frightened into a limited conceffion by the menaces of Ireland, frightened out of it by the menaces of England, was again frightened back again, and made an univerfal furrender of all that had been thought the peculiar, reserved, uncommunicable rights of England; The exclufive commerce of America, of Africa, of the Weft-Indies-all the enumerations of the acts of navigation-all the manufactures, -iron, glass, even the laft pledge of jealoufy and pride, the interest hid in the fecret of our hearts, the inveterate prejudice moulded into the conftitution of our frame, even the facred fleece itself, all went together. No referve; no exception; no debate; no difcuffion. A fudden light broke in upon us all. It broke in, not through well-contrived and well-disposed windows, but through flaws and breaches; through the yawning chasms of our ruin. We were taught wisdom by humiliation. No town in England prefumed to have a prejudice; or dared to mutter a petition. What was worse, the whole Parliament of England, which retained authority for nothing but furrenders, was defpoiled of every shadow of its fuperintendance. It was, without any qualification, denied in theory, as it had been trampled upon in practice. This fcene of fhame and difgrace, has, in a manner whilst I am fpeaking, ended by the perpetual establishment of a military power, in the dominions of this crown, without confent of the British legiflature,

legislature*, contrary to the policy of the cof ftitution, contrary to the declaration of right: and by this your liberties are swept away along with your fupreme authority-and both, linked together from the beginning, have, I am afraid, both together perished for ever.

What! Gentlemen, was I not to forefee, or foreseeing, was I not to endeavour to fave you from all these multiplied mifchiefs and difgraces? Would the little, filly, canvafs prattle of obeying inftructions, and having no opinions but yours, and fuch idle fenfeless tales, which amuse the vacant ears of unthinking men, have saved you from "the pelting of that pitilefs ftorm," to which the loofe improvidence, the cowardly rashness of those who dare not look danger in the face, fo as to provide against it in time, have exposed this degraded nation, beat down and proftrate on the earth, unfheltered, uharmed, unrefifting? Was I an Irishman on that day, that I boldly withstood our pride? or on the day that I hung down my head, and wept in fhame and filence over the humiliation of Great

Britain? I became unpopular in England for the one, and in Ireland for the other. What then! What obligation lay on me to be popular? I was bound to ferve both kingdoms. To be pleased with my fervice, was their affair, not mine.

I was an Irishman in the Irish business, just as much as I was an American, when on the fame

Irish perpetual mutiny act.

principles,

principles, I wished you to concede to America; at a time when fhe prayed conceffion at our feet. Juft as much was I an American when I wished Parliament to offer terms in victory, and not to wait the well-chofen hour of defeat, for making good by weakness, and by fupplication, a claim of prerogative, pre-eminence, and authority.

Inftead of requiring it from me, as a point of duty, to kindle with your paffions, had you all been as cool as I was, you would have been faved difgraces and diftreffes that are unutterable. Do you remember our commiffion? We fent out a folemn embaffy across the Atlantic ocean, to lay the Crown, the Peerage, the Commons of Great Britain, at the feet of the American Congrefs. That our disgrace might want no fort of brightening and burnishing, obferve who they were that compofed this famous embaffy. My Lord Carlifle is among the first ranks of our nobility. He is the identical man who but two years before, had been put forward, at the opening of a feffion in the House of Lords, as the mover of an haughty and rigorous address against America. He was put in the front of the embaffy of fubmiffion. Mr. Eden was taken from the office of Lord Suffolk, to whom he was then under fecretary of state; from the office of that Lord Suffolk, who but a few weeks before, in his place in parliament, did not deign to enquire where a Congrefs of vagrants was to be found. This Lord Suffolk fent Mr. Eden to find thefe vagrants, without knowing where his King's Generals

C

Generals were to be found, who were joined in the fame commiffion of fupplicating those whom they were sent to fubdue. They enter the capital of America only to abandon it; and these affertors and reprefentatives of the dignity of England, at the tail of a flying army, let fly their Parthian fhafts of memorials and remonftrances at random behind them. Their promises and their offers, their flatteries, their menaces, were all defpifed; and we were faved the difgrace of their formal reception, only because the Congrefs fcorned to receive them; whilft the State-house of independent Philadelphia opened her doors to the public entry of the ambaffador of France. From war and blood, we went to fubmiffion; and from fubmiffion plunged back again to war and blood; to defolate and be defolated, without meafure, hope, or end. I am a Royalist, I blushed for this degradation of the Crown. I am a Whig, I blushed for the difhonour of Parlia ment. I am a true Englishman, I felt to the quick for the difgrace of England. I am a Man, I felt for the melancholy reverse of human affairs, in the fall of the first power in the world.

To read what was approaching in Ireland, in the black and bloody characters of the American war, was a painful, but it was a neceffary part of my public duty. For, Gentlemen, it is not your fond defires or mine that can alter the nature of things; by contending against which what have we got, or fhall ever get, but defeat

and

and fhame? I did not obey your instructions! No. I conformed to the inftructions of truth and nature, and maintained your interest, against your opinions, with a conftaney that became me. A representative worthy of you, ought to be a per fon of stability. I am to look, indeed, to your opinions; but to fuch opinions as you and I must have five years hence. I was not to look to the flash of the day. I knew that you chofe me, in my place, along with others, to be a pillar of the state, and not a weathercock on the top of the edifice, exalted for my levity and verfatility, and of no ufe but to indicate the fhiftings of every fashionable gale. Would to God, the value of my fentiments on Ireland and on America had been at this day a fubject of doubt and difcuffion! No matter what my fufferings had been, fo that this kingdom had kept the authority I wished it to maintain, by a grave forefight, and by an equitable temperance in the use of its power.

The next article of charge on my public conduct, and that which I find rather the most prevalent of all, is Lord Beauchamp's bill. Į mean his bill of last feffion for reforming the lawprocefs concerning imprisonment. It is faid, to aggravate the offence, that I treated the petition of this city with contempt even in presenting it to the House, and expreffed myself in terms of marked disrespect. Had this latter part of the charge been true, no merits on the fide of the question which I took, could poffibly excufe