THE RIGHTS OF THE IRISH PEOPLE

Delivered, April 19, 1780, in the Irish House of Commons in moving a Declaration of Irish Rights1

I

HAVE entreated an attendance on this day, that you might, in the most public manner, deny the claim of the British Parliament to make law for Ireland, and with one voice life up your hands against it.

If I had lived when the ninth of William took away the woollen manufacture, or when the sixth of George I took away your constitution, I should have made a covenant with my own conscience, to seize the first reasonable moment of rescuing my country from the ignominy of such acts of power; or, if I had a son, I should have administered to him an oath that he would consider himself as a person separate and set apart for the discharge of so important a duty.

Upon the same principle am I now come to move a Declaration of Right, the first moment occurring in my time in which such a declaration could be made with any chance of success, and without an aggravation of oppression.

Sir, it must appear to every person that, notwithstanding the import of sugar, and export of woollens, the people of this country are not satisfied; something remains-the greater work is behind-the public heart is not well at ease. To promulgate our satisfaction, to stop the throats of millions with the votes of

[Ireland had been treated by the Eng lish, for three centuries, like a conquered nation. A Parliament had indeed been granted her, but by a well-known statute, called Poynings's Act, the English government had power to prevent the Irish Parliament from ever assembling, except for purposes which the King saw reason to approve. Under such an administration, the commercial and manufacturing interests of Ireland were wholly sacrificed to those of the English; the exportation of woollen goods, and of most other articles of English manufacture, and also the direct import of

foreign articles, being denied the Irish. These restrictions had been removed in part, on the ground of "expediency," by an act of the British Parliament, passed December 13, 1779, under the terror of the Irish Volunteers, and Mr. Grattan, with the same instrument of compulsion in his hands, now moved the Irish Parliament to a Declaration of Right, which should deny the authority of England to make laws for Ireland-an authority asserted by an act of the British Parliament, passed in the sixth year of George I.-EDITOR.]

Parliament, to preach homilies to the Volunteers, to utter invectives against the people under the pretence of affectionate advice, is an attempt, weak, suspicious, and inflammatory.

You cannot dictate to those whose sense you are instructed to represent.

Your ancestors, who sat within these walls, lost to Ireland trade and liberty. You, by the assistance of the people, have recovered trade. You owe the kingdom a constitution; she calls upon you to restore it.

The ground of public discontent seems to be, "We have gotten commerce, but not freedom." The same power which took away the export of woollen and the export of glass, may take them away again. The repeal is partial, and the ground of repeal is a principle of expediency.

Sir, expedient is a word of appropriated and tyrannical import-expedient is a word selected to express the reservation of authority, while the exercise is mitigated-expedient is the ill-omened expression in the repeal of the American Stamp Act. England thought it "expedient" to repeal that law. Happy had it been for mankind if, when she withdrew the exercise, she had not reserved the right. To that reservation she owes the loss of her American empire, at the expense of millions; and America the seeking of liberty through a scene of bloodshed. The repeal of the Woollen Act, similarly circumstanced, pointed against the principle of our liberty, may be a subject for illuminations to a populace, or a pretence for apostacy to a courtier, but cannot be a subject of settled satisfaction to a free-born, an intelligent, and an injured community.

It is, therefore, they [the people of Ireland] consider the free trade as a trade de facto, not de jure-a license to trade under the Parliament of England, not a free trade under the charter of Ireland-a tribute to her strength, to maintain which she must continue in a state of armed preparation, dreading the approach of a general peace, and attributing all she holds dear to the calamitous condition of the British interest in every quarter of the globe. This dissatisfaction, founded upon a consideration of the liberty we have lost, is increased when they consider the opportunity they are losing; for, if this nation, after the deathwound given to her freedom, had fallen on her knees in anguish, and besought the Almighty to frame an occasion in which a weak

and injured people might recover their rights, prayer could not have asked, nor God have formed, a moment more opportune for the restoration of liberty, than this in which I have the honor to address you.

England now smarts under the lesson of the American war. The doctrine of imperial legislature she feels to be perniciousthe revenues and monopolies annexed to it she found to be untenable. Her enemies are a host pouring upon her from all quarters of the earth-her armies are dispersed the sea is not hers she has no minister, no ally, no admiral, none in whom she long confides, and no general whom she has not disgraced. The balance of her fate is in the hands of Ireland. You are not only her last connection-you are the only nation in Europe that is not her enemy. Besides, there does, of late, a certain damp and supineness overcast her arms and councils, miraculous as that vigor which has lately inspirited yours. With you everything is the reverse. Never was there a Parliament in Ireland so possessed of the confidence of the people. You are now the greatest political assembly in the world. You are at the head of an immense army; nor do we only possess an unconquerable force, but a certain unquenchable fire, which has touched all ranks of men like a visitation. Turn to the growth and spring of your country, and behold and admire it!

Where do you find a nation who, upon whatever concerns the rights of mankind, expresses herself with more truth or force, perspicuity or justice-not in the set phrases of the scholiast; not the tame unreality of the courtier; not the vulgar raving of the rabble; but the genuine speech of liberty, and the unsophisticated oratory of a free nation. See her military ardor, expressed not in forty thousand men conducted by instinct, as they were raised by inspiration, but manifested in the zeal and promptitude of every young member of the growing community. Let corruption tremble! Let the enemy, foreign or domestic, tremble! but let the friends of liberty rejoice at these means of safety and this hour of redemption—an enlightened sense of public right, a young appetite for freedom, a solid strength, and a rapid fire, which not only put a Declaration of Right within your power, but put it out of your power to decline one! Eighteen counties are at your bar. There they stand, with the compact of Henry, with the charter of John, and with all the pas

sions of the people! "Our lives are at your service; but our liberties we received them from God, we will not resign them to man!" Speaking to you thus, if you repulse these petitioners, you abdicate the office of Parliament, you forfeit the rights of the kingdom, you repudiate the instructions of your constituent, you belie the sense of your country, you palsy the enthusiasm of the people, and you reject that good which not a minister-not a Lord North-not a Lord Buckinghamshirenot a Lord Hillsborough, but a certain providential conjuncture, or, rather, the hand of God, seems to extend to you.

I read Lord North's propositions, and I wish to be satisfied, but I am controlled by a paper (for I will not call it a law); it is the sixth of George I. [Here the clerk, at Mr. Grattan's request, read from the act of the sixth of George I, "that the kingdom of Ireland hath been, is, and of right ought to be, subordinate to and dependent upon the Imperial Crown of Great Britain, as being inseparably united to and annexed thereunto; and that the King's Majesty, by and with the consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and Cuthority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the kingdom and the people of Ireland."]

I will ask the gentlemen of the long robe, is this the law? I ask them whether it is not the practice? I appeal to the judges of the land, whether they are not in a course of declaring that the Parliament of England naming Ireland, binds her? I appeal to the magistrates of Ireland whether they do not, from time to time, execute certain acts of the British Parliament? I appeal to the officers of the army, whether they do not confine and execute their fellow-subjects by virtue of the Mutiny Act of England? And I appeal to this House whether a country so circumstanced is free? Where is the freedom of trade? Where is the security of property? Where the liberty of the people? I here, in this Declaratory Act, see my country proclaimed a slave! I see every man in this House enrolled a bondsman! I see the judges of the realm, the oracles of the law, borne down by an unauthorized power! I see the magistrates prostrate; and I see Parliament witness to these infringements, and silent! I therefore say, with the voice of three millions of people, that, notwithstanding the import of sugar, and export of woollen and

kerseys, beetle-wood and prunellas, nothing is safe, satisfactory, or honorable; nothing, except a Declaration of Right! What! Are you, with three millions of men at your back, with charters in one hand and arms in the other, afraid to say, We are a free people? Are you the greatest House of Commons that ever sat in Ireland, that want but this one act to equal that English House of Commons which passed the Petition of Right, or that other, which passed the Declaration-are you, are you afraid to tell the British Parliament that you are a free people? Are the cities and the instructing counties, who have breathed a spirit that would have done honor to old Rome, when Rome did honor to mankind-are they to be free by connivance? Are the military associations-those bodies whose origin, progress, and deportment have transcended, equalled, at least, anything in modern or ancient story, in the vast line of Northern array—are they to be free by connivance? What man will settle among you? Who will leave a land of liberty and a settled government for a kingdom controlled by the Parliament of another country; whose liberty is a thing by stealth; whose trade a thing by permission; whose judges deny her charters; whose Parliament leaves everything at random; where the hope of freedom depends on the chance that the jury shall despise the judge stating a British act, or a rabble stop the magistrate in the execution of it, rescue your abdicated privileges by anarchy and confusion, and save the constitution by trampling on the government?

But I shall be told that these are groundless jealousies, and that the principal cities, and more than one-half the counties of the kingdom, are misguided men, raising those groundless jealousies. Sir, they may say so, and they may hope to dazzle with illuminations, and they may sicken with addresses, but the public imagination will never rest, nor will her heart be well at ease; never, so long as the Parliament of England claims or exercises legislation over this country. So long as this shall be the case that very free trade (otherwise a perpetual attachment) will be the cause of new discontent. It will create a pride and wealth, to make you feel your indignities; it will furnish you with strength to bite your chain; the liberty withheld poisons the good communicated. The British minister mistakes the Irish character. Had he intended to make Ireland a slave, he should have kept her a beggar. There is no middle policy. Win