no regard to them. The manufacturers of Great Britain would be contented. Administration had taken some pains to make the House believe that if they could carry this fourth proposition in the Irish parliament, there would be an end of the business, and an end to all apprehensions on our part, as the treaty must then be final. But let the House not deceive themselves with this idea, nor think so meanly of the Irish, that even if their parliament should make a surrender of their legislative independence, the people at large would agree to it, or remain quiet under such a sacrifice. There were recent historical facts which proved that the acquiescence of the Irish House of Commons was not conclusive. And it was necessary to make this remark now, that we might not be deceived into a belief, that by their acceding to this fourth propositiou the business must be finally settled. It was not the acquiescence merely of this or that description of men that could settle upon a firm basis the terms that were equal to bind and cement the interests and prosperity of a great commercial people, if that acquiescence was given in opposition to reason and to facts. Salus populi suprema lex was a maxim universally admitted. And such was the unfortunate construction of the fourth proposition, that nothing was more probable than that both countries would be obliged to appeal to it for relief. Incompetent as the propositions had been found to quiet the uneasinesses or secure the affections of Ireland, and pernicious as this fourth proposition was, in particular, to the honour or interests of either country, Mr. Fox appealed to the candour and good sense of the committee, whether it would not now be more fair, more manly, and more honourable to address the Irish to this "that, however purpose; desirous and happy we should be to serve you, yet, in justice to our own country, we find we cannot grant what we offered. Without being the ruin of many here, we cannot serve an equal number of you. Without exposing our own country and its manufactures and manufacturers to ruin, or without your yielding up the independency of your parliament, we cannot grant the participation offered to you.' Gloomy, disgraceful, and fatal as this address would prove to the present ministry, yet it could not be denied but that the same address was conveyed to the Irish indirectly by this very proposition. To prosecute this measure upon terms that never could be adhered to, and, if admitted, could never prove permanent, must prove the source of endless and additional complaints from Ireland, and of trouble to Great Britain. As a generous and liberal people, the Irish ought to be dealt with accordingly. They were capable of receiving the worst with fortitude; but it was by no means to be expected, therefore, that they would be imposed upon with patience. The prosperity of Ireland was undoubtedly to be considered as the prosperity of Great Britain, and there was no Irishman of sense but was equally sensible that the prosperity of England was the prosperity of Ireland. In our prosperity the Irish were as firmly interested as we were in theirs; and if they could not prosper without endangering that trade upon which the revenue of the empire principally depended for support, they would ultimately find it a purchase dearly bought. Yet it was by no means his opinion that the prosperity of Ireland might not be promoted without injury to the British trade: but of this he was sure, that no good could ever arise from the present measure of ministry towards carrying on the purposes so much wanted that of a perfect and cordial understanding between the two countries. Nothing was more plain, and nothing more true, than that the more the Irish propositions had been investigated, the greater number of objections had arisen up against them. They promised much to Ireland, but took away more than they gave. The learned gentleman over the way (Mr. Dundas) had said more to these points probably than he intended: he had avowed a caution necessary on his part, to say how little Ireland would be benefited, how much Great Britain would be a gainer. This was the ministerial language here; and it was well known they held another language in the other kingdom. This was only part of that littleness of conduct, mixed with duplicity, that distinguished all the measures of the present ministry, and particularly their conduct throughout this negociation. This system was pregnant with the worst consequences to both countries. Without administering any certain good to Ireland, it was to be accomplished only by a surrender of her legislative independence. The participation threatened, on one hand, ruin to many of our most valuable manufactories, and demanded a surrender from Ireland, ever too dear for her to pay, for any advantages of trade so remote and uncertain as it might prove. A system loaded with such objections, and pregnant with such mischiefs to both countries, Mr. Fox declared he could not vote for. Monstrous as the sacrifices were that had been attempted by ministry to be made to Ireland (in particular that of the power of renewing the East India company's charter); destructive as this fourth proposition must prove to thousands of manufacturers in this kingdom; yet nothing was more obvious than this fact, that Ireland would reap no advantage whatever, as the resumption of the British parliament over that of Ireland took a power that did away every idea of benefit to be expected from the participation of our trade. Numerous as the objections against this proposition really were, Mr. Fox declared he did not take upon him to say that all the objections contained in them were yet found out; for as more of them were discovered, the more they seemed to multiply, and grow daily stronger by their numbers. It was not, therefore, to be wondered that ministry did every thing in their power to hurry them through parliament; but let them beware of the consequences. Impregnated as the propositions were with the most alarming mischiefs to both countries, and foreign as they were to effect any one good purpose to either, it was his duty to oppose them; for, instead of producing benefits, they would certainly prove the source of the most unhappy consequences both to Great Britain and to Ireland. The question being put on the amendment proposed by Lord Beauchamp, the committee divided: Yeas 36: Ñoes 194. The resolution was then agreed to. May 30. The report of the committee of the whole House on the Irish Propositions was this day taken into consideration. Mr. Sheridan opposed the fourth resolution in a most able speech. Mr. Pitt said, that it had been his intention to have remained silent, not expecting any thing new to occur on a subject which, for a long series of time, had undergone such frequent and patient debate. However, though nothing had been brought forward in the course of the present argument, except what tended to inforce objections that had already been made and answered; yet the channel through which the present opposition came, and the mode in which it had been handled, was such, as strongly demanded some farther notice from him. When he considered the language that had been held, and the quarter it came from, when he reflected on the designs of those who had presented themselves in so conspicuous a manner as the enemies of the resolution then before the House, and saw with how much artifice and zeal those designs were supported, and when he weighed the motives, as well of those who had been silent as of those who had spoken to the question, he could not remain an idle spectator in a transaction that so essentially concerned the interest of the two kingdoms, which composed the remaining part of the British empire. If a chain of recent events, and the whole tenor of the conduct that had been adopted by persons of a certain description had not exhausted and anticipated his surprise at any thing that could come from them, he could scarcely believe his senses, when he beheld a gentleman (Mr. Sheridan), who for many weeks had concealed his intentions, so effectually as to leave it a doubt whether he was friendly or hostile to the arrangement now depending, stand forth the avowed enemy of a part of the system which was necessarily connected with the whole, and take up a ground of opposition the most dangerous and inflammatory that could possibly suggest itself. But it was not to be wondered at that the conduct of the honourable gentleman should be so inconsistent, when it was remembered, how inconsistent all the measures of the party of which he was the mouth, were in themselves, and how inconsistent the persons who composed that party were with one another. Still the pursuits of that party, however various and however contradictory, had one uniform tendency. Whether they reprobated on this day, what they had approved on the preceding, or whether they abandoned a principle which they had before admitted; whether one individual differed from or coincided with the rest of his associates, still the effect of all their efforts, of all their perseverance, and of all their tergiversation was to be the same to embarrass and confound the measures of administration, to embroil and disunite the affections of their fellow-subjects, to excite groundless alarms, and on those groundless alarms to foment the most dangerous discontents. The noble lord in the blue ribbon, in assenting to the resolution, and the honourable gentleman in opposing it, had taken care to support their several opinions by the same argument, and that argument was, of all others, best calculated to promote the ultimate design of both, however different the modes they took to accomplish it- the jealousy and resentment of the sister kingdom. The resumption of legislative supremacy over Ireland was the ground of acquiescence in the one, of dissent in the other; and thus they divided between them the two features of the character which their right honourable friend, Mr. Fox, had shewn himself so ambitious to assume, that of an English and an Irish patriot. How gentlemen could think themselves warranted in setting up an opposition to measures, in favour of which they had borne more than a silent testimony, (for they had expressly acknowledged the several amendments to be such, as not only were in themselves unexceptionable, but had also the positive merit of correcting, in a great degree, the objectionable qualities of the original propositions,) was a circumstance only to be accounted for by those who, from a close attention to the conduct of the party, and a congeniality of sentiment with them, had brought themselves to understand and to adopt the whole of their system, and were thence enabled to see that it was a double game that they were playing, and that their appearing to oppose the resolutions by arguments directly contrary to each other, was merely with a view to secure the same end, and to compass the same design. - Mr. Fox began with remarking, that, in the personal and political character of the right honourable the chancellor of the exchequer, there were many qualities and habits that had often surprised him, and, he believed, had confounded the speculations of every man who had ever much considered or analyzed his disposition; but that his conduct on that night had reduced all that was unaccountable, incoherent, and contradictory in his character in times past, to a mere nothing. That he shone out in a new light, surpassing even himself, and leaving his hearers wrapt in amazement, uncertain whether most to wonder at the extraordinary speech they had just heard, or the frontless confidence with which that speech had been delivered. Such a farrago of idle and arrogant declamation, uttered in any other place, and by any other person, upon the subject in question, would naturally fill the members of that House with astonishment; but, spoken by that right honourable gentleman within those walls, in the presence of men who were witnesses of all the proceedings upon this business, every one of whom could bear testimony to the gross and unblushing fallacy of the right honourable gentlemanit was, Mr. Fox said, an act of boldness, a species of parliamentary hardihood, certainly not to be accounted for upon any known or received rules of common sense or common reason. I cannot (continued Mr. Fox) help remarking the vast disparity in the tone, the temper, and the style of expression exhibited by the right honourable gentleman upon this night, from those which he deemed it expedient to adopt when he opened the eighteen propositions to this House. night I quoted a passage, Telephus et Peleus, cum pauper exul et uterque, On that and quoted it to exemplify the change occasioned by the deplorable situation into which his rashness, his ignorance, or what is not more reputable than either, his servile adoption of other men's fancies, and thrusting forward the crude heap of discordant and dangerous materials which form this miserable project, had involved the right honourable gentleman. Upon that occasion, I could not help observing, that the ampullæ and the sesquipedalia verba - that the right honourable gentleman's magnificent terms, his verbose periods, and those big, bombastic sentiments which constitute, in general, the principal part of his orations, had for once forsaken him, or been relinquished, for language and for manners better accommodated to his disastrous condition. Then we saw the avowed confederacy of the right honourable gentleman with those about him, whose co-operation in the general system of his government he is commonly so anxious to disavow, but whose opinions he so uniformly propagates and asserts then we |