forth no fruit but the apples of Sodom. That great states should allow the smaller to enjoy their independence unmolested; was more to be wished than expected. Ireland could not stand alone. In the present state of Europe she must be united either to England or to France. Fully convinced of the beneficial tendency of an Union, be looked forward with satisfaction to the change, which it would produce in Ireland. English capital would seek employment in Ireland, and diffuse improvement and wealth. The bogs would be converted into fields covered with smiling harvests; the barren mountains would be covered with cattle; mines would be wrought, and canals would unite the most distant parts of the country; the old sources of wealth would be extended; new ones would be discovered; and the inhabitants of Ireland, now poor, idle, and discontented, would be rendered rich, industrious, and happy. This change must be the work of time; and posterity would bless the wisdom and firmness of the parliaments of two countries, which effected so great a plan, and generously supe rior to partial views and selfish considerations, coalesced into one for mutual interest, Union was a contract that ought to be founded upon free consent, arising from a persuasion of utility. He was afraid that Ireland was not yet persuaded of the advantages, which she might derive from it, and that she had not taken that comprehensive view of the subject, which would be quickly followed by her full consent, In such a case this nation and the parliament of this country ought to shew that they were not actuated by any narrow and selfish views, and that they disdained to employ any corrupt influence for the purpose of obtaining that concurrence, which ought to be the result of conviction. At the same time, they ought to deprecate all opposition arising from partial views, local interests, selfish considerations, or what, with liberal minds, might have weight no less powerful, the love of popular applause: they ought to shew, that they respected the independence of the Irish parliament, and, that they were ready to acquiesce in that decision, which, after due deliberation, it should embrace. Such alone was the course suited to the high character of the British nation; and such, indeed, was the course which the legislature had avowed its determination to follow. This proceeding alone was consonant with eternal justice and with the dignity of the country, fitted to conciliate the affections of the Irish, a high-spirited but warm-hearted people. In the present contest, he said, all our firmness and energy were required. France was supported in every country but her own, no less by the sword than by her pestilent doctrines, and by the corrupt ambition of the desperate. Armed with these instruments of destruction, she went on, spreading desolation whereever she appeared, crushing in the dust equally all civil government and all ecclesiastical establishment. When he contemplated this hideous monster at a distance, it was with horror; near, he viewed it with anxiety, but without despondence, trusting, that under the protection of Providence, this country would be able to meet the danger. No human means, he was convinced, could contribute more to this end than a liberal, free and equitable legislative Union between Britain and Ireland. Lord Minto made a long, argumentative, and elaborate speech in favour of Union. The two countries seemed to him to approach each other by an irresistible attraction, by a species of political gravitation: no human obstruction, he thought, would long avail to keep them asunder; and, when they should once be in contact, another law of nature, a principle of adhesion and tenacity, would hold them together, and eternally cement and consolidate their Union. But, though the event thus seemed to be predestined, the best means of accelerating it ought not to be neglected. For the illustration of his argument, he had recourse to the inconveniences and evils of the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy which led to the establishment of the English monarchy; and the salutary effects of the change appeared in the ultimate preservation of the kingdom from Danish conquest, by which the divided states would otherwise have been enslaved. He acknowledged the loyalty, prudence, honour, and spirit of a great part of the Hibernian nation, while he lamented that these qualities had not been able to prevent an extensive conspiracy for the avowed purpose of separation. As this object had occasioned a civil war, the evils of imperfect connection were at their height; and the two governments were called upon, by the great danger of their countries, to snatch the people from the precipice, on which they stood, and conduct them into that path, which had led the Welsh and Scots to "more than safety," to dignity, prosperity, and happiness. Referring to the practical inducements which might recom mend a legislative Union, his lordship divided into positive and negative the advantages derivable from it to Great Britain. To the former class, he said, belonged the real and effective force, which would accrue from it, in a naval and military view; and, in using the latter term, he chiefly alluded to the advantage of avoiding, in times of contest and of war, those embarrassments and distractions which rendered Ireland, instead of a resource, only a dead weight hung round the neck of British exertion,' He did not say that Ireland would inevitably be lost without an Union; but he feared that we should have no security for her preservation, if the bonds of connection should not speedily be drawn much closer. With such apprehensions he deemed it not unseasonable to contemplate the consequences of a total separation of Ireland from Britain, and of the probable attendant on such a rupture, the alliance of the former state with the French. As an Irish democratical republic, or rather anarchy, would be the first result of the separation, we should immediately feel the disastrous effects of such a change. Those who ought to be our friends would then be our enemies; our western coasts would be greatly endangered; our trade would be injured; and a variety of evils would follow, all of which, if the French should become absolute masters of the new republic, would be alarmingly aggravated. He then enumerated some of the consequences, which would result to Ireland from the separation. As it could not be supposed that the nation would be unanimous in rejecting British connection for the purpose of fraternising with the French, the event, he said, would not take place before one party, now the strongest, should have been subdued. But submission to force would not change the mind; and the republican rulers of Ireland would find, that the British troops, when employed in the rescue of that country from the Gallic yoke, would be seconded by a great portion of the inhabitants. Hence would arise the complicated miseries of foreign and internal war. The charges of such a contest would fall with oppressive weight on a people hitherto protected in a great measure by Britain; and the insu lated trade and wealth of Ireland would not furnish a sufficiency of men or of money for such importunate demands. He would not detain their lordships by describing the extent or the violence of those passions, which now inflamed and exasperated both parts of the Irish nation against each other. Every one knew the firm and immoveable basis, on which their mutual hatred stood, the irreconcilable nature of its motives, its bitter, malignant, and implacable character. In this frame and temper of mind, however towards each other, one of those portions of Ireland claimed and exercised what was felt by both to be a species of dominion over the other. It was hardly too much to say, that there were two nations in Ireland; the one sovereign, the other subject. The sovereign class or cast of Irishmen claimed their sovereignty as of right, and grounded it on an old title of conquest, confirmed, as they contended by possession, acquiescence, and prescription. They claimed also the federal support of Great Britain in maintaining that dominion, on the solemn grounds of fidelity to implied compact, compensation for sacrifices, and reward for services. They shewed a close alliance and identity of views between themselves and the English interest in Ireland at all times; and they relied as strongly on recent and even on present exertions in a common cause, as on the uniform tenour of their ancient services. In a word, they called at once upon the honour and gratitude of Great Britair, and supported that appeal by a stream and series of facts. But he never could admit the ascendancy of one part of a nation over another part of the same nation, to the extent and to the purpose claimed in Ireland, as capable of assuming any character deserving the denomination of right. That which was wrong on one side could never become a right on the other. Neither possession, nor prescription, nor any limitation of time which are supposed to cure the vices of bad titles, were at all applicable to the case of perpetually subsisting, and, as it were, renovating wrongs, especially such as affected the political rights. of great numbers of men. If possession then would not constitute this singular right, which is claimed in wrong, as between the parties themselves, neither could it be improved by the interests, the engagements, or the obligations of a third party; he could not see how the jus tertii as it might be called, of England, could affect the relative claims of these two Irish nations, or of these two parts of the Irish nation. The Catholics of Ireland claimed not only political equality in the government of their country, a claim in which his lordship sympathized with them; but they were thought to entertain, and to nourish yet more. fondly and anxiously, claims on the property of Protestants, the present possession of which they treated as mere usurpation; and these claims were of no trfling extent. If to the physical force already possessed by the Catholic body, were added (by any revolution) the advantages of political power, and the weight and influence which belonged to the authority of government and legislation, some danger might accrue to the property, the establishment, and even the personal security of the Protestants in Ireland; and hence arose an alarming dilemma. The Protestants could not be supported in that ascendancy which seemed necessary even for their protection, without derogating from what might appear to be a natural right of the Catholics. The Catholics could not be supported in their claim of equality, without transferring to them that ascendancy, which equality of rights must draw to the larger body, and which from that moment must expose the Protestants to dangers from which they ought to be protected. Such seemed to be the practical difficulties in the way of abstract justice, while the government of Ireland continued merely local. Irish parliament, in which the ascendancy was either Protes tant or Catholic (and it could not but lie on one side or the other), might be expected still, he feared to gore and lacerate the country, by one or other of the horns of that dilemma: and he saw no perfect remedy for Irish division, and its lamentable consequences, while these two enraged and implacable opponents were still shut up together, and still enclosed within the very theatre, on the very arena of their ancient and furious contention. That divided and double condition of the Irish people required something of an imperial aula, a legislature founded on a broader and more liberal basis, to administer impartial laws to all, and to reconcile security with justice. While one of these. parties must judge the other, in which ever hand the fasces might be placed, there was reason to expect only violence in the suit, and, if not injustice, at least slow and imperfect justice in the decree. A strong conviction arose out of these considerations, that the united parliament of Great Britain and Ireland would, in the peculiar circumstances of Ireland, constitute a better legislature, and a more perfect because a more impartial parliament for all Ireland, than any representation of a minor part or section of that country, in a separate local parliament, ever could. Laws therefore beneficial to the mass of the people of Ireland, and promoting its general prosperity and happiness, must be expected with greater confidence from the united parliament, in which local partialities, interests, and passions, would not divert the straight and equal current of legislation, than from an Irish parliament, where these stumbling-blocks must for ever bend or impede its course. In the united parliament right may be done unaccompanied by wrong. Irish Catholics might be invested with their political capacities, without the slightest danger to Protestant establishment or property. These, on the contrary, must acquire a tenfold and hundredfold security in the Prctestant parliament, and the genuine Protestant ascendancy of the united kingdom. The Protestant church and property might be secured, without perpetuating the present humiliating and degrading exclusion of the Catholic part of the Irish nation. For these reasons, he advised the insertion of an explicit article in the treaty or act of Union, providing for the just claims of the Catholic Irish; but he was not strenuous or decisive in his recommendation; for he added, that, "if any political "peculiarities of the present time should render it impractica"ble to engross these wholesome provisions in the written treaty "itself," he would rather repress his wishes for the immediate * It appears that the British ministers, in order to avoid any fresh difficul ties or delays being thrown into the negociation for Union, resolved not to introduce any stipulation for the Catholics, reserving that measure to be brought |