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voked, their piety active but in subserviency to their priesthood, and their power passive but in the subjugation of their people! Such are the dynasties you have conferred on Europe. In the very act, that of enthroning three individuals of the same family, you have committed in politics a capital error; but Providence has countermined the ruin you were preparing; and whilst the impolicy prevents the chance, their impotency precludes the danger of a coalition. As to the rest of Europe, how has it been ameliorated? What solitary benefit have the "deliverers" conferred ? They have partitioned the states of the feeble to feed the rapacity of the powerful; and after having alternately adored and deserted Napoleon, they have wreaked their vengeance on the noble, but unfortunate fidelity that spurned their example. Do you want proofs; look to Saxony, look to Genoa, look to Norway, but, above all, to Poland! that speaking monument of regal murder and legitimate robbery

Oh! bloodiest picture in the book of time

Sarmatia fell-unwept-without a crime!

Here was an opportunity to recompense that brave, heroic, generous, martyred, and devoted people; here was an opportunity to convince Jacobinism that crowns and crimes were not, of course, coexistent, and that the highway rapacity of one generation might be atoned by the penitential retribution of another! Look to Italy; parcelled out to temporizing Austria-the land of the muse, the historian, and the hero; the scene of every

elassic recollection; the sacred fane of antiquity, where the genius of the world weeps and worships, and the spirits of the past start into life at the inspiring pilgrimage of some kindred Roscoe. You do yourselves honour by this noble, this natural enthusiasm. Long may you enjoy the pleasure of possessing, never can you lose the pride of having produced the scholar without pedantry, the patriot without reproach, the Christian without superstition, the man without a blemish! It is a subject I could dwell on with delight for ever. How painful our transition to the disgusting path of the deliverers. Look to Prussia, after fruitless toil and wreathless. triumphs, mocked with the promise of a visionary constitution. Look to France, chained and plundered, weeping over the tomb of her hopes and her heroes. Look to England, eaten by the cancer of an incurable debt, exhausted by poor-rates, supporting a civil list of near a million and a half, annual amount, guarded by a standing army of 149,000 men, misrepresented by a House of Commons, 90 of whose members in places and pensions derive 200,000l. in yearly emoluments from the minister, mocked with a military peace, and girt with the fortifications of a war-establishment! Shades of heroic millions, these are thy achievements! MONSTER OF LEGITIMACY, this is thy consummation!!! The past is out of power; it is high time to provide against the future. Retrenchment and reform are now become not only expedient for our prosperity, but necessary to our very existence. Can any man of sense say that the

present system should continue? What! when war and peace have alternately thrown every family in the empire into mourning and poverty, shall the fattened tax-gatherer extort the starving manufacturer's last shilling, to swell the unmerited and enormous sinecure of some wealthy pauper? Shall a borough-mongering faction convert what is misnamed the National Representation into a mere instrument for raising the supplies which are to gorge its own venality? Shall the mock dignitaries of Whiggism and Toryism lead their hungry retainers to contest the profits of an alternate ascendency over the prostrate interest of a too generous people? These are questions which I blush to ask, which I shudder to think must be either answered by the parliament or the people. Let our rulers prudently avert the interrogation. We live in times when the slightest remonstrance should command attention, when the minutest speck that merely dots the edge of the political horizon, may be the car of the approaching spirit of the storm? Oh! they are times whose omen no fancied security can avert; times of the most awful and portentous admonition. Establishments the most solid, thrones the most ancient, coalitions the most powerful, have crumbled before our eyes; and the creature of a moment robed, and crowned, and sceptred, raised his fairy creation on their ruins! The warning has been given; may it not have been given in vain!

I feel, Sir, that the magnitude of the topics I have touched, and the imminency of the perils

which seem to surround us, have led me far beyond the limits of a convivial meeting. I see I have my apology in your indulgence-but I cannot prevail on myself to trespass farther. Accept, again, Gentlemen, my most grateful acknowledgments. Never, never can I forget this day: in private life it shall be the companion of my solitude; and if, in the caprices of that fortune which will at times degrade the high and dignify the humble, I should hereafter be called to any station of responsibility, I think I may at least fearlessly promise the friends who thus crowd around me, that no act of mine shall ever raise a blush at the recollection of their early encouragement. I hope, however, the benefit of this day will not be confined to the humble individual you have so honoured: I hope it will cheer on the young aspirants after virtuous fame in both our countries, by proving to them, that however, for the moment, envy, or ignorance, or corruption, may depreciate them, there is a reward in store for the man who thinks with integrity and acts with decision. Gentlemen, you will add to the obligations you have already conferred, by delegating to me the honour of proposing to you the health of a man, the health of a man, whose virtues adorn, and whose talents powerfully advocate our cause; I mean the health of your worthy Chairman, Mr. SHEPHERD.

SPEECH

OF

MR. PHILLIPS

IN

THE CASE OF GUTHRIE v. STERNE,

DELIVERED

IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS,

DUBLIN.

My Lord and Gentlemen,

IN this case I am of counsel for the plaintiff, who has deputed me, with the kind concession of my much more efficient colleagues, to detail to you the story of his misfortunes. In the course of a long friendship which has existed between us, originating in mutual pursuits, and cemented by our mutual attachments, never, until this instant, did I feel any thing but pleasure in the claims which it created, or the duty which it imposed. In selecting me, however, from this bright array of learning and of eloquence, I cannot help being pained at the kindness of a partiality which forgets its interest in the exercise of

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