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SPEECH

OF

MR. PHILLIPS

AT THE SLIGO COUNTY MEETING.

ON Monday the 10th April, there was a large and respectable meeting in the court house, of the gentlemen, clergy, freeholders, and other inhabitants of the county of Sligo, for the purpose of taking into consideration an address of condolenec to the king on the death of his royal father, and of congratulation to his majesty on his accession to the throne. Wm. Parke Esq. high sheriff in the chair.

Owen Wynne Esq. moved an address.

Major O'Hara seconded the motion,

Charles Phillips Esq. then rose and spoke to the following effect:

I AM happy, Sir, in having an opportunity of giving my concurrence both in the sentiment and principle of the proposed address. I think it should meet the most perfect unanimity. The departed monarch deserves, and justly, every tribute which posterity can pay him. He was one of the most popular that ever wayed the sceptre of these countries. He never forgot

his early declaration that he gloried in the name of Briton, and Britain now reciprocates the sentiment, and glories in the pride of his nativity. He was, indeed, a true born Englishman-brave, generous, benevolent and manly-in the exercise of his sway and the exer cise of his virtues so perfectly consistent that it is diffi cult to say whether as a man or sovereign he is most to be regretted. He commenced for the Catholic a conciliatory system-he preserved for the Prostestant the inviolability of the constitution-he gave to both a great example in the toleration of his principles and the integrity of his practice. The historian will dwell with delight upon those topics. He will have little to censure and much to commend. He will speak of arts, manufactures, literature encouraged-he will linger long among those private virtues which wreathed themselves around his public station-which identified his domestic with his magisterial character, and made the father of his family, the father of his people. He will not fail to remark how ample, and at the same time, how discriminating was his patronage, and he will truly say, that if the pencil of West, directed to the sacred volume by his bounty-if the old age of Johnson, cheered and consoled by his royal liberality, were to stand alone, they would undeniably attest the purity of his taste and the piety of his morals. Attributes, such as these, Sir, come home to the bosom of every man amongst us--they descend from the throne, they mingle with the fireside, they command more than majesty often can, not only the admiration but the sympathy of mankind. Nor may we forget, independent of his most virtuous example in private life, the vast public

benefits, which, as a king, his reign conferred upon the country-the liberty of the press, guaranteed, as far as reason can require it, and where restrained, only so restrained as to prevent its running into licentiousness -the trial by jury fully defined and firmly established -the independence of the bench voluntarily conceded, which deprived the executive of a powerful and possible instrument, and vested the rights and property and privilege of the people in the integrity of a now unassailable tribunal. These are acts which we should register in our hearts; they should canonize the memory of the monarch; they made his realm the land-mark of European liberty, they made its constitution the model for European imitation. Let us not either in our estimate of his character forget the complexion of the times in which he lived; times of portent and prodigy, enough to perplex the council of the wise, and daunt the valour of the warrior;-in such extremities, experience becomes an infant, and calculation a contingeney. From the terrific chaos of the French revolution, a comet rose and blazed athwart our hemisphere, too splendid not to allure, too ominous not to intimidate, too rapid and too eccentric for human speculation. The whole continent became absorbed in wonder; kings and statesmen and sages fell down and worshipped, and the political orbs, which had hitherto circled in harmony and peace, hurried from our system into the train of its conflagration. There was no order in politics; no consistency in morals; no stedfastness in reli gion.

Vice prevailed and impious men bore sway.

Upon the tottering throne the hydra of democracy sat grinning; upon the ruined altar a wretched prostitute' received devotion, and waved in mockery the burning cross over the prostrate mummers of the new philoso. phy! All Europe appeared spell-bound; nor like a vulgar spell did it perish in the waters. It crossed the channel. There were not wanting in England abun</ dance of anarchists to denounce the kiug, and of infi. dels to abjure the Deity; turbulent demagogues who made the abused name of freedom the pretence for their own factious selfishness; atheists looking to be worshipped, republicans looking to be crowned; the nobles of the land were proscribed by anticipation, and their property partitioned by the disinterested patriotism of these Agrarian speculators. What do you think it was during that awful crisis which saved England from the hellish Saturnalia which inverted France? Was it the prophetic inspiration of Mr. Burke? The uncertain adhesion of a standing army? The precarious principles of our navy at the Nore? Or the transient resources of a paper currency? Sir, I believe in my soul this empire owed its salvation during that storm to the personal character of the departed sovereign, When universal warfare was fulminated against monarchy, England naturally turned to its representative at home, and what did she find him? Frugal, moral, humane, religious, benevolent, domestic; a good father, a good husband, a good man, rendered the crown she gave him still more loyal, and not only preserving but purifying the trusts she had confided. She looked to his court, and did her morality blush at the splendid debauchery of a Versailles? Did her faith revolt at the

gloomy fanaticism of an Escurial? Far from it. She saw the dignity which testified her sway tempered by the purity which characterised her worship; she saw her diadem glowing with the gems of empire, but those gems were illumined by a ray from the altar; she saw that aloft on his triumphal chariot her monarch needed not the memento of the republican; he never for a moment forgot that "he was a man.” Sir, it would have been a lot above the condition of humanity, if his measures had not sometimes been impeached by party. But in all the conflicts of public opinion as to their policy, who ever heard an aspersion cast upon his motives? It is very true, had he followed other councils, events might have been different, but it is also well worth while to notice, would our situation have been improved? Would Great Britain revolutionised, have given her people purer morals, mere upright tribunals, more impartial justice, or more "perfect freedom" than they now participate? Did the murder of her prelates, her nobility and her king, followed by twenty years of military sway, procure for France, more popular privileges than those of which we have been in undisturbed possession? Was the chance of some problematical improvement worth the contingencies? Should we surrender a present practical reality for the fantastic scheme of some Utopian theorist? Ought we to confound a creation so regular and so lovely for the visionary paradise that chaos might reveal to us? The experiment has been tried, and what has been the consequence? Look to the continent at this moment. Its unsettled governments! its perturbed spirit! its pestilential doctrines! Go to the tomb of

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