HENRY GRATTAN

HE

ENRY GRATTAN was born in 1746; his father, a Protestant, was for many years Recorder of the City of Dublin, and for five years its representative in the Irish Parliament. His mother was a daughter of Thomas Marlay, Chief-Justice of Ireland. Both at school and at Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered in 1763, young Grattan greatly distinguished himself. In 1767 he began to keep his terms in the Middle Temple, London, and was called to the Irish bar in 1772. From the time that he left the university, he seems to have given his attention chiefly to politics and to the study of popular oratory. When in 1775 he entered the Irish Parliament, his powers were already under full command, and he became almost immediately the acknowledged leader of the Opposition. It was he more than any other man who secured the repeal of Poyning's Act, and the resultant independence of the Irish Parliament. Before the rebellion of 1798 Grattan had retired to private life, but in 1800, though in feeble health, he re-entered the Irish Parliament for the special purpose of opposing the motion for union with Great Britain. He exerted all his eloquence in condemnation of the measure. After the Union was effected, he withdrew a second time from public life, but in 1805 entered the English Parliament in order to render his assistance to the passing of the Catholic relief bill. He continued to advocate the concession of political rights to Catholics up to his death, in 1820. It is thought that, as regards subject matter, his speeches do not suffer from comparison even with those of Burke, while they are almost unequalled in respect of the incisive vigor and startling originality of the style.

AGAINST ENGLISH IMPERIALISM

DELIVERED IN THE IRISH PARLIAMENT, APRIL 19, 1780

IR, I have entreated an attendance on this day that

STR

you might, in the most public manner, deny the

I claim of the British Parliament to make law for Ireland, and with one voice lift up your hands against it. If I had lived when the 9th of William took away the woollen manufacture, or when the 6th of George I.

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declared this country to be dependent and subject to laws to be enacted by the Parliament of England, I should have made a covenant with my own conscience to seize the first 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 a person separate and set apart for the discharge of so important a duty; upon the same principle I am now come to move a Declaration of Right, the first moment occurring, since my time, in which such a declaration could be made with any chance of success, and without 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 Parliament; to preach homilies to the volunteers; to utter invectives against the people, under pretence of affectionate advice, is an attempt, weak, suspicious, and inflammatory.

You cannot dictate to those whose sense you are intrusted 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 still owe the kingdom liberty; 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 woollens and the export of glass may take them away again; the repeal is partial, and the ground of repeal is upon a principle of expediency.

Sir, "expedient" is a word of appropriated and tyrannical import; "expedient" is an ill-omened word, selected to express the reservation of authority, while the exercise is mitigated; "expedient" is the ill-omened expression of 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 sea of blood. shed. The repeal of the Woollen Act, similarly circumstanced, pointed against the principle of our liberty-a present relaxation, but tyranny in reserve-may be a subject for illumination to a populace, or a pretence for apostasy to a courtier, but cannot be the subject of settled satisfaction to a freeborn, intelligent, and injured community. It is therefore they consider the free trade as a trade de facto, not de jure; as a license to trade under the Parliament of England, not a free trade under the charters of Ireland;-as a tribute to her strength to maintain which she must continue in a state of armed prepara tion, 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 death wound 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 furnished, 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 pernicious; the revenues and monopolies annexed to it she has found to be untenable; she lost the power to enforce it; 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 spurious supineness overcast her arms and councils, miraculous as that vigor which has lately inspirited yours-for with you everything is the reverse; never was there a Parliament in Ireland so possessed of the confidence of the people; you are the greatest political assembly now sitting in the world; you are at the head of an immense army; nor do we only possess an unconquerable force, but a certain unquenchable public 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 the set phrase of scholastic men, not the tame unreality of court addresses, not the vulgar raving of a rabble, but the genuine speech of liberty, and the unsophisticated oratory of a free nation.

See her military ardor, expressed, not only 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. Yes; there does exist an enlightened sense of rights, 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; they stand there 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 privileges of Parliament, forfeit the rights of the kingdom, repudiate the instruction of your constitutents, bilge the sense of your country, palsy the enthusiasm of the people, and reject that good which not a minister, not a Lord North, not a Lord Buckinghamshire, not a Lord Hillsborough, but a certain providential conjuncture, or, rather, the hand of God, seems to extend to you. Nor are we only prompted to this when we consider our strength; we are challenged to it when we look to Great Britain. The people of that country are now waiting to hear the Parliament of Ireland speak on the subject of their liberty; it begins to be made a question in England whether the principal persons wish to be free; it was the delicacy of former Parliaments to be silent on the subject of commercial restrictions, lest they should show a knowledge of the fact, and not a sense of the violation; you have spoken out, you have shown