They found a record removed into their court by au- · thority of the king's writ, and finding it there, they could not avoid giving judgment upon it. This, however, raised a new ferment in Ireland, and this judicial act of lord Mansfield and his brethern, was represented here as a direct violation of British faith, and an open and unequivocal attack upon the Irish constitution. Lord Buckingham was then lord lieutenant of Ireland, and although I was not then a servant of the crown, having lived in early habits of friendship and intimacy with him, I can from my knowledge state, that with a firm conviction that Great Britain had always intended, fully, fairly, and unequivocally to renounce all legislative and judicial authority over this country, he felt the warmest anxiety to satisfy the people of Ireland that their suspicions were unfounded; that whether the act by which the British parliament yielded their legislative claims, was an act of simple repeal, or an act of renunciation, they might and ought to place full and firm confidence in the faith and honour of Great Britain as their best security; but it was stated to him that there were British statutes unrepealed made for the protection of trade, particularly to the East Indies, by which penalties were inflicted upon Irish subjects for breach of them committed in this country, and that suits for the recovery of these penalties, were, by the same statutes, recognizable in the king's superiour courts at Westminster; and it was stated to him that the mere repeal of the declaratory act of the 6th Geo. I. would not be sufficent to bar any suit which might be so instituted, but that an act of renunciation would be construed by the English judges as a virtual repeal of all laws theretofore made which imported to bind Ireland. Lord Buckingham therefore plainly saw that such an act was necessary for the peace of both countries, and warmly recommended to the British government to have it proposed in parliament. Accordingly a bill was introduced into the British house of commons I believe by his brother, now lord Grenville, which passed into a

law without opposition, renouncing, in terms the most unequivocal all legislative or judicial authority in Ireland, declaring the right of the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by their parliament, and barring all writs in errour or appeals from judgment or decrees of Ireland, to any British judicature; and I very much fear there are men in this country, who never have forgiven lord Buckingham for the part which he took, in advising a measure so necessary to the peace of Great Britain and Ireland. It might reasonably have been expected that the people of Ireland, being gratified on the point of renunciation would have taken breath, and suspended at least their constitutional labours. But the moment the act of renunci. ation was obtained, a new grievance occurred, and it was discovered that in order to secure the new constitution of Ireland, it was necessary to alter the frame of the representative body by which, in effect, it had been established; and the people being then self arrayed and armed, after due deliberation, it was determined to elect a military convention to meet in the metropolis, as the surest, most efficacious, and constitutional organ, through which to convey the sense of the nation upon the subject of parliamentary reform. This convention assembled with considerable military pomp and parade at the city of Dublin, and having assumed to itself all the forms and functions of a house of parliament, a bill for the reform of the representation of the people was regularly presented, read a first and second time, committed, reported, and agreed to, and being engrossed, was sent at the point of the bay. onet by two members of the convention, who were also members of the house of commons, to be registered by that assembly. The house of commons treated this insult with the indignant contempt which it merited, and the men who had been betrayed into such an act of contumacious folly awed by the rebuke which they received from the house of commons, and by the firmness of lord Northington, dispersed and returned to the places from whence they had come, many of them much ashamed of their rashness and in

temperance. And be it also remembered, that one of the loudest modern declaimers in the British parliament for Irish emancipation, was then a cabinet minister of Great Britain, and that he did then, with all the energy and ability which distinguish him, most emphatically state his opinion to lord Northington, that the existence of legitimate government in Ireland, depended on the dispersion of this convention, and that her connexion with the British crown depended on preserving the frame of the Irish house of commons as it then stood, unaltered and unimpaired.

After the dispersion of this military convention, we had a short respite from popular ferment on the ground of constitutional grievances, but a new topick of discontent was started. It was discovered that the manufactures of Great Britain were imported into this country upon terms which gave them a preference in the Irish market-a preference, by the way, which superiour excellence alone can give them, and the remedy proposed for this grievance was, that we should commence a war of prohibitory duties, although it was notorious that the balance of trade between Great Britain and Ireland was very considerably in our favour, and that if the parliament of Ireland had been so infatuated as to yield to popular outcry upon this subject, we had not the means of manufacturing woollen cloth in this country, nearly sufficient for the use of its inhabitants. The discussion of this question, however, led to the memorable treaty in 1785, if I may so call it, between the parliaments of both countries, for a final adjustment of the commercial intercourse between this country and Great Britain, and the British colonies and plantations, when a fair and liberal offer was made by Great Britain to open her markets, and to share her capital with this country; to give to Ireland a perpetual right of trading with her colonies and plantations upon the terms only of our adopting the laws which she enacts for regulating her navigation and trade with them. This offer was wisely rejected by the Irish house of commons, under a silly deception put upon the people of Ireland, who F f

VOL. IV.

were taught to believe, that the offer thus made to them was an insidious artifice of the British minister to revive the legislative authority of the British parliament, which had been so recently and unequivocally renounced, and under this gross and palpable deception were the solid interests of Great Britain and Ireland, their mutual peace and harmony, and indissolvable connexion sacrificed in the house of commons of Ireland, on the altar of British and Irish faction. If any thing could have opened the eyes of the nation what passed within two sessions, from 1785, ought to have exposed the dupery practised upon them at that period. In the interval, Great Britain thought it necessary to extend the principle of her navigation acts to ships British and Irish built; and in 1787, the parliament of Ireland did without hesitation adopt this new act of navigation, and declared all the former British acts of navigation to be of force in this country, a point which some persons had before that time affected to question. And there is no real friend of Ireland who can doubt that it is her interest to follow Great Britain in her code of navigation laws; there is no real friend of Ireland who can doubt that it is her interest to follow Great Britain in her code of laws for regulating her trade with the British colonies and plantations; for on no other terms can we be permitted to trade with them. There must be one system of imperial policy throughout the British empire, and if we are to remain a part of it, it is idle to suppose that the parliament of Ireland can ever enact laws in opposition to any principle of imperial policy adopted by Great Britain.

Unhappily in 1789, a new occasion arose upon which the parliament of this country thought fit to act upon the most critical imperial question which could have arisen, not only without regard to what had passed upon the same subject in Great Britain, but with direct and avowed hostility to the parliament and government of that country. I pass by the events of that disastrous period, and shall only say, that the intemperate, illegal, and precipitate conduct of the Irish

house of commons upon that critical and momentous occasion, has, in my opinion, in all its consequences, shaken to its foundations our boasted constitution, and eminently contributed to bring this country into its present dangerous and alarming situation. It is in the recollection of us all, that at the conclusion of the session of 1789, nothing was left untried by lord Buckingham to restore peace, and to conciliate those who had acted with marked personal hostility to him, so far as he could go without a breach of publick duty. If he was capable of harbouring private resentment for unprovoked personal injuries offered to him, he had the magnanimity to sacrifice his feelings to an anxious solicitude for the peace of Ireland; and I have often lamented that his efforts proved unsuccessful, and that he was compelled, much against his will, to displace some old servants of the crown who had opposed his government with warmth, and not only avowed their determination to persist in the same opposition, but declined with sullen indignation even to hold communication with him. And if the confidential servants of the crown are to oppose his majesty's government, and to decline all communication with his ministers, I am at a loss to know how it can exist. The first step which was taken in consequence of this political schism by gentlemen who had been the sole authors of it, was to found a political club for the reformation of alleged publick abuses and political grievances. The first society of that class which I believe had existed in this country; certainly it is the first within my memory. This political institution was announced to the world by a manifesto signed and countersigned, in which the British government was charged in direct terms with a deliberate and systematick conspiracy to subvert the liberties of Ireland. The basis of it was, a solemn resolution to preserve the constitution of the realm as settled by the revolution in Great Britain and Ireland in 1688, and recstablished in Ireland in 1782; and all persons of congenial sentiments and principles were invited to repair to the standard thus raised for the protection of the