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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, 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 Flood felt keenly the manner in which he had been superseded as leader of the National Party.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 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

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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.

Portland and Temple, who held in succession the viceroyalty at this critical period, both formed a very unfavourable impression of the character of Flood, though they both rated very high his ability and his influence. His ambition,' Portland wrote to Shelburne, 'is so immeasurable that no dependence can be placed upon any engagement he may be induced to form.' Temple urged that the most strenuous opposition should be given to the policy of Flood, as the slightest concession would only increase his demands; he spoke of the universal dislike that the nobility and persons of property bear to him,' and he described him as 'the only person in his party whom any contingency of circumstances might make it necessary for us to buy,' but he states that Flood's doctrines were daily becoming more popular and his ascendency over the volunteers more formidable. He notices the support which Flood's doctrine received from Belfast; he declared that the Presbyterians in the north of Ireland were totally republican and averse to English government,' and the whole situation was described in his confidential letters as almost desperate. The representations of perfect content and pacification so much heard in England are treacherously and insidiously false.' "The country is too wild to act from reflection, and till you can oppose Parliament effectually to the volunteers nothing can be done.' 'Those to whom the

people look up with confidence are not the Parliament, but a body of armed men composed chiefly of the middling and lower orders, influenced by no one, but leading those who affect to guide them.' 'There is hardly a magistrate who will enforce or a man who will obey any law to which he objects.' 'It is my unalterable opinion that the concession is but the beginning of a scene which will close for ever the account between the two kingdoms.'

Temple was not a man of great ability or foresight, and he had but a very slight experience of Irish affairs. It is impossible, however, to deny the great danger of the situation, and difficult to acquit Flood of having been largely actuated by personal motives. No man was more attached to him than Charlemont, but he clearly recognised the strong personal element in Flood's later policy. 'Ambition,' he says, 'though tempered by many amiable and estimable qualities, was ever his ruling passion.' He was always 'suspicious, intractable, too fond of pre-eminence.' He had expected when leaving office under Lord Harcourt to find himself at the head of his party, but he found himself wholly displaced by Grattan, and his new policy seemed intended to regain his popularity. Portland hoped to restore him to the side of the Government by offering to replace him in the Privy Council without office, but the negotiation was clumsily conducted and the offer was scornfully rejected. When Northington, succeeding Temple, became Viceroy in the brief Coalition Ministry, new overtures were made unofficially to Flood through Edward Malone and through Markham, the Archbishop of York, and it was clearly intimated to him that he might have a leading place in the new Administration.

In estimating his true character it must be noticed

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that he entirely refused these overtures. Charlemont, who knew him well, has said of him that 'avarice made no part of his character.' Nor is there any evidence that he ever asked for or desired a peerage, which was the usual reward of a wealthy politician who was negotiating with Governments. Nothing in the Irish history of the latter half of the century is more conspicuous than the lavishness with which peerages were then granted as a means of parliamentary management. It was stated that between 1762 and 1783 inclusive, thirtythree barons, sixteen viscounts, and twenty-four earls had been added to the Irish peerage. But Flood, though from his fortune and political position he might most easily have attained this dignity, never aspired to it. The ambition of power, which was largely patriotic but also in some measure personal, was his guiding influence, and the question of Simple Repeal and the Renunciation Act which had been granted by England, and which was regarded as a confirmation of the justice of his view, had placed him once more in a position of great power and wide, though certainly not unchallenged, popularity.

Under these circumstances it needed but little to produce an explosion, and that little was supplied by a discourteous and unfair allusion to Flood's illness which escaped from Grattan in the heat of the debate. The question before the House was the necessity of reducing the Irish army, to which Grattan strongly objected and which Flood vehemently advocated. Flood rose indignantly, and, after a few words of preface, launched into a fierce diatribe against his opponent. His task was a difficult one, for few men presented a more unassailable character. Invective, however, of the most extravagant description was the custom of the time, and invective between good and