greatly aggravated-the narrow policy of the times was applying temporary palliatives. Subscriptions were collected to keep the artificers from famishing; associations were formed to wear only domestic manufactures; and parliament itself looked no further than to alleviate the pressure of the immediate evil. Mr Grattan, however, whose mind was formed to embrace something beyond present objects, perceived that the root of those calamities was not a temporary stagnation of trade from the American war, but rather to be found in the unjust restraints imposed by Great Britain on the exertions of the country. He was the first, therefore, who had the boldness and the wisdom to urge the legislature to complain of those restraints; his efforts were seconded by the unanimous voice of the country; and such was the efficacy of a political truth, thus urged, and thus supported, that even the whole force of British influence was found unequal to resist it. The Irish legislature adopted the sentiment; and, after some hesitation on the part of the British parliament, the commerce of Ireland was in part thrown open. A temporary gleam of satisfaction was shed over the country by this concession, as it was called, of the British parliament; for so accustomed had the people been to exclusion, to penalties, and to restriction, that a relaxation or suspension of any of these was looked on as the conferring of a positive benefit, rather than the cessation of an actual injury.

Mr Grattan's name was now become an object of adoration to the people, and by the volunteer associations which the dangers of the war had called forth, he was looked up to with peculiar respect. In this state of affairs the reaction of popularity upon patriotism seemed to impart new energy to his mind. Mr Grattan continued to exert himself with indefatigable assiduity in the senate; and by leading the mind of the public, and even of the legislature itself, to the consideration of national rights, and the actual political situation of their common country with respect to England, he was clearing the way for that measure which he meditated,—a declaration of the legislature in favour of national independence. His eloquence, of a cast more warm and animated than either parliament or the people had usually felt, and exerted upon subjects on which the human mind is susceptible of the greatest degree of enthusiastic fervour, was gratified by complete success. Directed by an understanding which could catch the moment propitious to exertion, and proportion its zeal to its object, his parliamentary speeches taught a subjugated nation to pant for independence; while the public voice, highly animated by the subject, and seconded by the assent of 80,000 men in arms, kindled, even in the cold bosom of parliament itself, a desire to assert its dignity, and rescue its authority from the gripe of British usurpation. Of this sentiment, so novel in an Irish legislature that had long forgotten the pride of independence, Mr Grattan availed himself; and by one of those extraordinary displays of impassioned eloquence, to which even the eloquent cannot rise unless assisted by the inspiration of a great subject, he obtained the celebrated declaration that the king, lords, and commons of Ireland only could make laws to bind Ireland.

Mr Grattan's popularity was now at a height almost without example. The achievement of a nation's independence by an individual, unaided by any force or any influence but that which genius and which