"Thus does it appear, that in cases concerning pensions by prerogative, the commons have interfered; though prerogative in those cases might plead that the revenues out of which these grants arose, were wholly appropriated; but a public grant appropriates itself to the public use; and the parliament that proceeds either to punish or control the diversion thereof, does not invade the prerogative of the crown, but exercises the privilege of the commons, in guarding the inheritance of the nation. In reforming such abuses, you may proceed in your inquisitorial capacity, as the greatest inquest of the nation, by impeachment, or in your legislative capacity, by bill; the latter is the milder method-my friend adopts it; and proceeds rather to reform than to punish. You tell him that we have submitted to this grievance for a long time. It is true; but a course of toleration and impunity, neither constitute innocence, nor draws out the sting of a grievance; it is true, you have submitted to this grievance for a long time. Hence the many erroneous arguments of this night. The public inheritance has been so diverted to private purposes, by a series of ministers, that we have forgotten the proprietor in the misapplication of the property, and talk of the estate, as of the private patrimony of the king-Hence these prerogatives of rapine! these rights of plunder! the authority of the king to be robbed by his own servants of the common stock !— Hence it is, that gentlemen have set up the shadow of prerogative as a centinel to public robbery.

"When gentlemen call this bill an attack on the prerogative of the crown, they are answered by the principles of the constitution; but they are also answered by a precedent of the most decisive nature; and that precedent is this very bill, which is now the law of England. By the law of England, no pensioner for years, or during pleasure, can sit in parliament; and by the law of England the amount of pensions is limited. The first law passed at the time of the Revolution, and was improved in the reign of queen Anne. The latter passed in 1782, with the entire concurrence of these very persons who now constitute this administration; and yet the argument of prerogative would have been stronger in England, because there a civil list had been granted to the king, and the subsequent limitation of pensions on that list, seemed a revocation of the powers of the grant. On what authority then, or pretence, do gentlemen call a measure which

they supported as necessary for England, an invasion of the rights of the crown, when proposed for the benefit of Ireland? What pretence have they for such partial doctrine of unequal measure? As if that was infringement in Ireland, which, in England was constitution; or, as if what was moderation in the people of England, would be in those of Ireland, arrogance and presumption.

"This leads me to another objection, on which gentlemen much relied, that this bill is an innovation--a new constitution; to admit the undue influence of the crown in parliament, and to control the excess of expense-an innovation! It is an encroachment most certainly, an encroachment on corruption, an invasion on the ancient privileges of venality; it is the old constitution encroaching and innovating on long established dishonest practices and accumulating expenses. All these expenses and practices, it seems we have already sanctified; we voted, the other night, that neither in their excess or application were they a grievance. Sir, I will not presume to censure a vote of this house, but I may be permitted to explain that vote; we could not mean, by that vote, that the present pension list was no grievance, for there was no man in debate hardy enough to make such an assertion; no man considers what that pension list is; it is the prodigality, jobbing, misapplication, and corruption of every Irish minister since 1772. To say that such a list was not, either in its excess or application, a grievance, was to declare, that since that period (that is, above half a century,) all your ministers were immaculate, or rather, indeed, that God had governed you himself, and had never sent you a minister in his anger.

"I declare I could not affirm the innocence of the list, because I should be guilty of affirming what I conceive to be false. Do gentlemen think otherwise?-Let them take their catalogue in one hand, and place on their heart the other; let them look this nation in the face, and in that posture declare, that the present Irish pension list is not, either in its excess or application, a grievance! They could not do it; they have voted what they would not say. I dissented from their vote, but I went along with their conviction."

SPEECH OF MR. GRATTAN,

ON THE

NAVIGATION ACT.

PREFATORY OBSERVATIONS.

On the 5th of March, 1787, Mr. Grattan desired to be informed what was meant by a bill, for which leave had been given the 23d of last February, under the title of "A bill for the improvement of Navigation," and whether that bill was to go farther than the registry of ships. The Attorney-general (Mr. Fitzgibbon) replied, that the intent was to insert a clause in the bill, declaratory of its being in force in this kingdom. "Then," said Mr. Grattan-"I find this bill is to enact the navigation law, a law of greatest anxiety to the British minister, a law intended to confer equal benefits, and impose equal restraints, but so considered by Britain, as to confer benefits on herself and exclude Ireland. This was a principle of the propositions, and a very old complaint-England sent plantation goods to Ireland, and refused to receive them from us, under colour and construction of one and the same law-the act of navigation. This law, it seems now, gentlemen begin to suspect is not valid in Ireland, and it is now proposed by them to be enacted here, subject to the hostile construction; and it is to be brought on, on Wednesday, to be passed, I suppose, with the usual expedition."

On the 20th of March, the Attorney-general's new bill was debated; on which occasion, Mr. Grattan moved an amendment, which, in his opinion, went completely and effectually to prevent any future misconstruction of the navigation act, whose original principle and object was equality of advantage to every part of the British empire. This celebrated act (which Blackstone describes as the most beneficial statute for the trade and commerce of England) was first framed in the year of Cromwell, 1650, with a narrow partial view-being intended to mortify our Sugar

Islands, which were disaffected to the parliament, and still held out for Charles the II., by stopping the gainful trades which they then carried on with the Dutch; and, at the same time, to clip the wings of those our opulent and aspiring neighbours-this act prohibited all ships of foreign nations from trading with any English plantations, without license from the council of state. In 1651, the prohibition was extended also to the mother country, and no goods were to be suffered to be imported into England, or any of its dependencies, in any other than English bottoms, or in the ships of that European nation, of which the merchandize imported was the genuine growth or manufacture; at the restora. tion, the former provisions were continued, by statute 12 of Charles the II., c. 18, with this very material improvement, that the master and three-fourths of the mariners shall also be English subjects.

This act of navigation, so justly considered by Englishmen as the great cause of their commercial ascendancy over the rest of mankind, or as Sir Joseph Child describes it," The Charta Maritima of England,"-the creator and preserver of that navy which rides triumphant over every sea, and dictates British law in the remotest corners of the globe, had not yet become the law of Ireland. The jealousy which originally dictated this celebrated act against the enemies of England, was directed against Ireland with the same selfish spirit; and the enlightened consideration of extending to the latter, all the advantages which flowed from this unprecedented monopoly to England, never occurred to those ministers, whose object should have been a community of interest and a free interchange of benefit with every part of the British empire. This act of navigation was a law of policy and power, rather than of commerce;—a martial policy was the object of those who gave birth to it; and it appears, from an inspection of the act, that its framers intended its operation should be general throughout the British empire. The broad and expanded views of Cromwell were defeated by the narrow and contemptible cunning of commercial avarice :-for though the act of the 12th of Charles II., which is called the act of navigation, recognizes the principle of universal operation throughout the empire, yet, in three years after that period, the miserable policy of England converted it into a law of commercial restriction, by forbidding the direct import of the colony trade with Ireland.

Thus, the liberal construction, which, from the words of the act, and the circumstances under which it was enacted, underwent various alterations in many subsequent statutes. By the navigation act-plantation goods were exportable only from the plantations to England, Ireland, Wales, and Berwick; but by a series of succeeding laws, (the 15th and 22d of Charles II.—the 7th and 8th of William, and 4th of George II.) all plantation goods were prohibited to be landed, from the plantations in Ireland, except a few articles, which escaped the enumeration in the act of George II. thus counteracting the original comprehensive intention of the act of navigation. To put an end to the possibility of any future misconstruction of this famous statute, which Ireland was about to adopt as the law of the land, Mr Grattan proposed the following amendment, which goes to secure all the benefits of the act, on the principle of Irish equality.

"And whereas, it is the meaning and intention of the said act, passed in England, in the 12th of king Charles II., to impose the same restraints, and confer equal benefits, on his majesty's subjects in England and in Ireland, and that both kingdoms shall be affected in the same manner."

To this amendment it was objected by ministers, that the act of Charles II., the liberality of which was so much relied upon by Mr. Grattan, had no reference whatever to the transportation of colonial goods between England and Ireland;--that the acts of customs, which was in force more than a century, regulated the trade that it was impossible to force England to adopt a construction of the navigation act, different from that which we had hitherto obtained; that the act, as it stood, without the amendment, was a source of infinite advantage to Ireland; it gave to the latter a monopoly in favour of her shipping; it gave her admission into the English ports, on the same terms as the English themselves-it gave her the protection of the British

navy.

To these objections, Mr. GRATTAN replied, with his accustomed force of argument, and brilliancy of illustration:

"Sir-From the thin and unfrequented state of these benches, one would naturally expect no business of moment. The Navigation act, now under your consideration, has been, from the earliest time, an object to Great Britain; for this she has incur