SPEECHES OF PLUNKET AND BUSHE 237

It is not surprising that it should have aroused the most passionate indignation among all those who cherished. the idea of Irish nationality, and who looked upon the Constitution of 1782 as the charter of Irish independence. In Parliament the speeches of Plunket and of some of his legal colleagues were masterpieces of powerful reasoning, and should be studied by all who desire to know the light in which the measure then appeared to some of the most disciplined Irish intellects. It would, indeed, be scarcely possible to find in the whole compass of parliamentary eloquence speeches breathing a more intense bitterness. 'I will make bold to say,' said Plunket, that licentious and impious France, in all the unrestrained excess which anarchy and atheism have given birth to, has not committed a more insidious act against her enemy than is now attempted by the professed champion of the cause of civilised Europe against her friend and ally in the time of her calamity and distress-at the moment when our country is filled with British troops-when the loyal men of Ireland are fatigued and exhausted by their efforts to subdue the rebellion-efforts in which they had succeeded before those troops arrived-whilst the Habeas Corpus Act is suspended—whilst trials by court-martial are carrying on in many parts of the kingdom-whilst the people are taught to think they have no right to meet or deliberate, and whilst the great body of them are so palsied by their fears or worn down by their exertions that even this vital question is scarcely able to rouse them from their lethargy at a moment when we are distracted by domestic dissensions-dissensions artfully kept alive as the pretext of our present subjugation and the instrument of our future thraldom.'

'For centuries,' said Bushe, 'the British Parliament and nation kept you down, shackled your commerce and

paralysed your exertions, despised your characters and ridiculed your pretensions to any privileges, commercial or constitutional. She has never conceded a point to you which she could avoid, nor granted a favour which was not reluctantly distilled. They have been all wrung from her like drops of blood, and you are not in possession of a single blessing (except those which you derived from God) that has not been either purchased or extorted by the virtue of your own Parliament from the illiberality of England.'

'If a

The language of Saurin was still stronger. Legislative Union,' he said, 'should be so forced upon this country against the will of its inhabitants it would be a nullity, and resistance to it would be a struggle against usurpation, and not a resistance against law. You may make it binding as a law, but you cannot make it obligatory on conscience. It will be obeyed as long as England is strong, but resistance to it will be in the abstract a duty, and the exhibition of that resistance will be a mere question of prudence.' When I take into account,' said Burrowes, 'the hostile feelings generated by this foul attempt, by bribery, by treason, and by force, to plunder a nation of its liberties in the hour of its distress, I do not hesitate to pronounce that every sentiment of affection for Great Britain will perish if this measure pass, and that, instead of uniting the nations, it will be the commencement of an era of inextinguishable animosity.'

Grattan, who more than any other living man was identified with the Constitution of 1782, was outside Parliament and much broken in health when the great question of the Union was introduced, and he did not appear upon the scene during the first session of its discussion. His illness had taken a nervous form which in the opinion of those who were about him altogether

ATTACKS UPON GRATTAN

239

incapacitated him from exciting political effort, and his star which had once shone so brightly over Irish politics, was for a time obscured or eclipsed. He had totally failed in his last parliamentary campaign to arrest the policy which, as he too truly predicted, was leading the country to rebellion, but his efforts had mortally offended the dominant faction in Parliament, and in the rage and passion and panic produced by the rebellion every effort was made to discredit him. The fact that he had been the steady advocate of parliamentary reform and Catholic Emancipation, and that these had been taken up as watchwords by the United Irishmen, and the fact that as a parliamentary leader he had come into slight and occasional contact with men who were afterwards implicated in the rebellion, were abundantly made use of. Shameful libels shamefully countenanced by men in authority were directed against him, and an absurd deposition of an obscure informer accusing him of having been sworn in as a United Irishman, though it was so false and so clearly refuted that the Government acknowledged that it could not possibly be sustained in a law court, was made the excuse for denouncing him as if he had been a convicted traitor. His name was struck off the Privy Council. His portrait was removed by the authorities of Trinity College from their Examination Hall, and replaced by that of Lord Clare. The Corporation of Dublin disfranchised him. The Guild of Dublin Merchants struck his name off their rolls, and the tide of obloquy and ingratitude ran so fiercely against the greatest and best of living Irishmen that he retired for several months to England.

A sudden change, however, passed over the feelings of the country when the determination of the Government to abolish the Irish Parliament was announced. Those who regarded the destruction of that Parliament as the

extinction of Irish liberty naturally felt that the foremost Irish orator and the author of the Constitution of 1782 must not be absent from their councils.

It was on January 15, 1800, that the Irish Parliament met for its last session, and it at once plunged into a debate on an amendment of Parsons' condemning the Union. It was one of the fiercest and most brilliant ever heard within its walls, and it extended through the whole night and far into the succeeding day. On that very day Grattan's friends purchased for him a seat for the nomination borough of Wicklow, which had just become vacant. By the consent of the sheriff the election was held at midnight. At five in the morning of the 16th Grattan was aroused from his bed, and two hours later he appeared in the House. He wore the uniform of the volunteers. He was so feeble that he could only walk with the assistance of two friends, and his head hung drooping upon his chest, but an unwonted fire sparkled in his eye, and the flush of deep emotion mantled his cheek. There was a moment's pause, an electric thrill passed through the House, and a long wild cheer burst from the galleries. Shortly afterwards he rose to speak, but his strength failed him, and he obtained leave to address the House sitting. For a few moments his voice was so feeble that it was almost inaudible. Soon, however, was witnessed that spectacle, among the grandest in the whole range of mental phenomena, of mind asserting its supremacy over matter, of the power of a strong passion and of a great genius nerving a feeble and an emaciated frame. As the fire of oratory kindled, as the angel of enthusiasm touched those pallid lips with the living coal, as the old scenes crowded on the speaker's mind, and the old plaudits broke upon his ear, it seemed as though the force of disease was neutralised, and the buoyancy of youth restored. His voice gained a deeper

CLOSE OF THE UNION STRUGGLE

241

power, his action a more commanding energy, his eloquence an ever-increasing brilliancy. For more than two hours he poured forth a stream of epigram, of argument, and of appeal. He traversed almost the whole of that complex question, he grappled with the various arguments of expediency the ministers had urged; but he placed the issue on the highest of grounds. The thing he proposes to buy is what cannot be sold-liberty.' When he at last concluded, it must have been felt by all his friends that if the Irish Parliament could have been saved by eloquence it would have been saved by him. He had been for some time vehemently denounced in Parliament, and Corry now attempted to crush him by a violent attack. Grattan treated his adversary with contemptuous silence till the assault had been three times repeated, when he terminated the contest by a brief but crushing invective, and a duel, in which Corry was wounded, was the result.

It was evident, however, that no eloquence and no arguments could save the Constitution of Ireland. In division after division Grattan was defeated, and he saw with an ineffable anguish the edifice which he had done so much to construct sinking into inevitable dissolution. Night after night the contest was vainly prolonged with a feverish and impassioned earnestness. Yet, even at that period, hope was not quite extinguished in his party. They saw that a Union was inevitable, but some, at least, looked beyond it. I know,' said Goold, that the ministers must succeed, yet I will not go away with an aching heart, because I know that the liberties of the people must ultimately triumph. The people must at present submit, because they cannot resist 120,000 armed men; but the period will occur when, as in 1782, England may be weak, and Ireland sufficiently strong to recover her lost liberties.' Nor were the last words of Grattan devoid of hope: The

VOL. I.

R