with him a large section of the intellect of the country. The broad question on which he differed from Grattan was the advisability of continuing the Volunteer Convention. Grattan wished Ireland to subside into its normal condition as soon as the independence of the Parliament had been declared; he felt the extreme danger of having the representatives of an armed force organised like an independent Parliament, and overawing all other authority in the land. He considered that parliamentary reforms should emanate from Parliament alone, and should be the result of no coercion except that of public opinion. Flood, on the other hand, perceived that Ireland was in a position, with reference to England, such as she might never occupy again; he believed that by continuing the Convention a little longer, guarantees of Irish independence might be obtained which it would be impossible afterwards to overthrow; and that Parliament might be so reformed as to be made completely subject to public opinion, and therefore completely above the danger of ministerial intrigue. He foresaw what Grattan at that time does not appear to have foreseen, that the English ministers would never cordially accept the new position of Ireland, and that the existing borough system gave them every facility for keeping its Parliament in a state of permanent debility and subservience, and, if necessary, of some day putting an end to its existence.

The Simple Repeal controversy may be thus shortly stated English statesmen maintained, and Irish Liberals, from Molyneux to Grattan, denied, that Poynings' Law made the Irish Parliament entirely and legitimately subservient to English control, and that the British Parliament had full authority to bind Ireland by its laws. The Parliament of England fixed the sense by a Declaratory Act, asserting the dependence of that of Ireland, and it was on these two enactments that its authority in Ireland rested.

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In 1782 the Irish Parliament asserted its own independence, and the English Parliament repealed its Declaratory Act. The question at issue was whether this was sufficient, or whether an express renunciation should be exacted from England.

Grattan argued that the principle of dependence was embodied in the Declaratory Act, and therefore that its repeal was a resignation of the pretended right; that when a man of honour affirms that he possesses a certain power, and afterwards solemnly retracts his declaration, it is equivalent to a distinct disavowal, and that the same laws of honour apply to nations and to individuals; that to require an express renunciation from England after what she had done would be to exhibit a distrustful and an overbearing spirit, and would keep alive the ill-feeling between the two countries which it was most important to allay; that it would also stultify the Irish National Party, for it would imply that England actually possessed the right she was called upon to renounce.

To these reasonings it was replied that the declaratory law did not make a right, and that therefore its repeal could not unmake it; that though the Irish maintained that England had never possessed the right in question, the English Parliament had asserted its authority, and the repeal of the Declaratory Act was not necessarily anything more than the withdrawal of that assertion as a matter of expediency for the present; that an express renunciation would be a charter of Irish liberties such as no legal quibble could evade; and that if England had no desire to reassert her claim she could have no objection to make it. It was added that the history of English dealings with Ireland showed plainly how necessary it was to leave no loophole or possibility of encroachment. It was a peculiarity of the Irish question that the independence of the

Irish Parliament was bitterly disliked in England, on different grounds, by the most opposite parties. The high prerogative party objected to it as a measure of political emancipation, and as likely to prove some day incompatible with the connection. The trading classes, who constituted the chief strength of the Whig Party, were equally opposed to it through their jealousy of Irish trade.

In addition to these general considerations, several circumstances had occurred in England which greatly disturbed the public mind. Lord Abingdon, in the English House of Lords, had drawn a distinction between a right to internal and a right to external legislation, and had argued that, while England had relinquished the former, she had retained the latter, and Fox had used language much to the same effect. Lord Beauchamp had written a pamphlet maintaining that simple repeal unaccompanied by a renunciation was insufficient. An English law with reference to the importation of sugar from St. Domingo had been drawn up in terms that seemed applicable to Ireland, and Lord Mansfield had decided an old Irish law case.

The Simple Repeal question was not started by Flood, but it gained its importance chiefly from his adhesion to the party who were yet unsatisfied. He brought forward their arguments with his usual force, and concluded his speech with an appeal of great solemnity, which bears every mark of earnest feeling. 'Were the voice,' he said, 'with which I now utter this the last effort of expiring nature; were the accent which conveys it to you the breath that was to waft me to that grave to which we all tend, and to which my footsteps rapidly accelerate, I would go on, I would make my exit by a loud demand for your rights; and I call upon the God of truth and liberty, who has so often favoured you, and who has of late looked down upon you with such a peculiar grace and glory of protection,

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to continue to you His inspirings, to crown you with the spirit of His completion, and to assist you against the errors of those that are honest, as well as against the machinations of those that are not.' Most of the volunteers, headed by the lawyer corps, whose opinion on such a question naturally carried great weight, supported Flood, and the popularity of Grattan in the country waned as rapidly as it had risen. It became customary to say that nothing had really been gained until the formal renunciation had been made; and at last Fox brought forward in England the required Renunciatory Act.

It was in the course of these discussions that the famous collision between Flood and Grattan took place. It had been for some time evident to close observers that it must come sooner or later. For several years the friendship between them had been growing colder and colder, and giving way to feelings of hostility. Flood felt keenly the manner in which he had been superseded as leader of the National Party. He could not reconcile himself to occupying a second place to a man so much younger than himself, after having been for so long a period the most conspicuous character in the country. The particular subject of the independence of Parliament he had brought forward again and again when Grattan was a mere boy, and it seemed to him hard that another should reap the glory of his long and thankless labour. He had sat in Parliament for sixteen years before Grattan had entered it. He had borne the brunt of the battle at a time when the prospects of the cause seemed hopeless; and if less brilliant than his rival, he was deemed by most men fully his equal in solid capacity, and greatly his superior in knowledge and experience.

Grattan, on the other hand, regarded Flood's adhesion to the Harcourt Administration and his conduct on the

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American question as acts of apostasy, and his agitation of Simple Repeal as a struggle for a personal triumph at the expense of the interests of the country. He dreaded the permanence of the Volunteer Convention, the increase of ill-feeling between the two countries, and a needless and dangerous agitation of the public mind. Ill-health and the position he had so long held had given Flood a somewhat authoritative and petulant tone, which contrasted remarkably with his urbanity in private life; and Grattan, on his side, was embittered by the sudden decay of his popularity, and by several slight and not very successful conflicts with his rival.

The position of Flood during these proceedings was a very ambiguous one, and it is difficult to speak with real certainty of the motives that actuated him. He seemed determined that the controversy between England and Ireland should not terminate, and he brought forward question after question of the most dangerous description. He was one of the small minority who objected to the address moved by Grattan on May 27, 1782, declaring that all constitutional questions between the two nations were at an end. He opposed the formation of certain 'fencible regiments,' which would have been much like the militia he had always advocated, because they would tend to do away with the necessity for the volunteers, and he again and again brought forward or supported measures for military retrenchment, reducing the Irish army below the 15,000 men provided under Lord Townshend. Such a measure, though it had been supported by Grattan at an earlier date, seemed to him most impolitic, dangerous, and ungrateful immediately after the concession of full independence by the British Government, and the question of Simple Repeal stirred up all the jealousies which a few months before seemed likely altogether to subside.