other the act of the twelfth of George III. in England, which prohibits their import from this country; and therefore he advises you to adopt the act of navigation, because there are two other acts of parliament which deprive you of its benefits. Before you pass the clause under consideration, recollect that we have not very indirectly been invited to institute an adjustment with great Britain. I am against advancing on that subject; I do not wish to make new points with England; there are some things might be better adjusted, but I would leave that adjustment to temper and to time. England now receives France and excludes Ireland. I do not believe she need be afraid of being rivalled by either; but this is a consideration for her and not for us; we have done our part; we have opened our market to England; we cannot give our constitution if she chooses to advance; if, ashamed to give privileges to France which she refuses to Ireland, she wishes to relax, 'tis well; we are ready to thank her; but if the court wishes to advance, and proposes the removal of a new doubt, by adopting a new and experimental measure, such as the present, we must assert, we reply, by establishing an old claim and an old principle. My answer to this proposition is to take the act of navigation on its true principle; and my sentiments are, Irish equality, and British shipping; and my amendment is as follows-and my vote shall be for the amendment and for the bill, for the English navigation act on its own principle."

He concluded with moving the following amendment to the preamble of the Act:

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

To put the house in possession of the whole measure, he stated that he intended to follow the amendment, by moving the annexed proviso for the Bill:

"Provided, that the said act, passed in England, in the twelfth year of the reign of Charles II., shall bind his majesty's subjects of Ireland, so long as it shall have the effect of conferring the same benefits, and imposing the same restrictions, on both kingdoms."

SPEECH OF MR. GRATTAN,

IN THE

DEBATE ON TITHES.

PREFATORY OBSERVATIONS.

It will not, perhaps, be considered by the readers of this vo lume an unnecessary, or an unimportant inquiry, to give a short history of that system which has been so long, and with so much justice, condemned as one of the most fruitful sources of discontent and disaffection, among the lower classes of the people of Ireland; nor will it contribute a little to the proper understanding of the merits, and to the due appreciation of the great talents which are displayed in those speeches which were pronounced by Mr. Grattan, in the years 1787, 1788, and 89; when the south and west of Ireland were distracted by a furious and barbarous association of persons, under the denomination of whiteboys, whose cruelties and outrages could only be accounted for, by the melan. choly reflection, that they seemed to have no resource but in the madness of despair-no prospect or hope of redress, but in the wild and senseless devastation of the property of those whom they considered their oppressors. Those who read the proceedings of the Irish parliament, at this memorable and afflicting pe riod, will be surprised, perhaps, that a legislature, composed of men, whose interests should have been the peace and happiness of their poor and oppressed countrymen, could discover no remedy for public grievance but the severest penalties of vindictive law; and that it should refuse inquiry into those complaints, which every dispassionate man in the kingdom acknowledges to have arisen from the greatest injustice ever practised on the poor of any country. He, whose heart was not closed by the seductions of interest, or whose existence did not depend on his venality, and the prostitution of his voice to the purposes of a

corrupt cabinet, saw, with pain and with indignation, tne exercise of an unlimited and undefined power, in the hands of the meanest, the lowest, and most inexorable tyrants-the titheproctors and tithe-farmers of Ireland; a set of men, unfeeling, uneducated, and unprincipled, placed between the rector and the farmer, for the purpose of shielding the former from the odium. of levying a tax, as difficult as unpleasant in the collection, and operating, in the majority of instances, as an intolerable grievance, and the fountain of bitterness and distress to the humble and industrious inhabitant of the cabin. That a protestant government, zealous for the propagation of its religion and its principles; that a protestant church, anxious for extending the foundation of its establishment and the conversion of its people; that a church, which labours, through the medium of charter schools, and the prodigal dissemination of prayer books through the land, to diffuse a liberal and enlightened religion, among a people whom it has often been pleased to represent and stigmatize as barbarous and uncivilized-should have persevered in a system so well calculated to render that religion odious; that it should have persevered in a system, which exposed the ministers of the protestant religion to a comparison with the meek, the humble, and protecting ministers of the catholic church; the former, from the cruel and relentless necessity of circumstances, obliged to goad and torment the miserable peasant, with all the chicanery, and cunning, and artifice of his tithe-proctor; while the catholic priest was ever to be seen administering to his mind, healing the wounds which oppression had inflicted, and preaching comfort and peace to the heart, which injustice, in her most odious form, had wrung. That the government of Ireland, but more particularly that the landed property of the kingdom, should close the doors of parliament against those men, who come forward to give evidence of the miseries and sufferings, which had goaded their fellow countrymen into acts of turbulence, and tumult, and violence, unparalleled in any other part of the civilized world. That all this should be done, under the mockery of protecting the church and the state against desperate innovation, and wild experiment, will no longer be a subject of wonder to those who have witnessed the close of that disgraceful scene, which terminated in the extinction of the liberties of Ireland. In 1788, Mr. Grattan, the advocate of the people, the undaunted and unanswerable

champion of public justice and public mercy, was represented by the hirelings of the castle, and the pastors of the church, as a conspirator against the peace and prosperity of his native land, and the existence of the established church. He was honoured with the titles of "factious agitator"-" turbulent demagogue," and all that miserable series of scurrility, which a prostitute and abandoned press could give birth to. That eloquence which fascinated the enemies of Ireland, while it denounced their corruption, their follies, and their crimes; that truth and courage, which convinced the reasonable, and dismayed the trading politician, were industriously slandered by the daily preachers of Christian charity, and the hypocritical defenders of the purity and stability of the protestant church. The curtain is now drawn up, and the minister who has completed the conquest of Ireland, has more than vindicated the great and glorious efforts of Mr. Grat tan in her defence. He cautioned the people of Ireland against that minister, in a loud and prophetic voice, and they were deaf to his remonstrances; he cautioned the country gentlemen (whose confidence Mr. Grattan ought to have possessed) against the folly and the fury of their laws, and the snare they were artlessly weaving for the liberty and character of their country. Mr. Grattan made his eloquent appeals in vain; the idle and stupid pride of not yielding to the clamours, and the tumults, and the violence of the people, was mistaken for manly firmness and dignified determination. The Irish parliament preferred a code of pains and penalties, to acts of mercy and redress! it preferred destroying and extinguishing the peasant, to an inquiry into his complaints; and after thus unnerving the arm of the people; after thus crushing their spirit to the earth, and stifling their cries, that same parliament stupidly called on their countrymen, in 1800, to protect them against the minister of England; they trembled for their darling ascendancy, and crouched to those honest feelings of Ireland, on which, for many years, they had been trampling. In 1800 it was not surprising, therefore, to see the people reluctant to take up arms, for the protection of that monopoly which governed them, and to perpetuate that tyranny, which, with a thousand heads, rioted on their comforts, their peace, and their feelings.-The short sketch of the history of tithes in Ireland, which we shall now give, will best demonstrate the truth of the foregoing observations.

According to the testimony of Spencer, tithes, in Ireland, were of no great value, for a length of time after the reformation; in his state of Ireland, he writes, “All the Irish priests, who now enjoy church livings in Ireland, are mere laymen; live like laymen, and follow all kinds of husbandry, and other worldly affairs." And elsewhere, he observes, "That the benefices are so mean, and of so small profit in those Irish countries, through the ill husbandry of the natives, they will not yield any competent maintenance for any honest minister to live upon." Primate Boulter, (whose administration commenced in 1724, and ended about 1742,) in a letter to Sir Robert Walpole, thus writes: "Since the reformation, while the lands were mostly in popish hands, the clergy took what they could get, thankfully; and very few went near their livings to their duty." In this state things remained until the revolution, or rather until the surrender of Limerick to king William, threw all the benefices into the hands of protestant rectors: at this period, peace was, in a great measure, restored to Ireland, and the clergy began by degrees to re-assume those rights which were heretofore disputed. In the year 1720, they demanded (as we are informed by bishop Boulter,) the tithes of Agistment, which being resisted by the landholders of Ireland, an application was made to the court of exchequer, who determined that the clergy were entitled, by law, to the tithe of Agistment. The resistance which was made to the payment of this tithe, in the year 1734, by the country gentlemen of Ireland, should have taught their successors, in the years 1786 and '7, some moderation, and should have inspired them with some sensibility for the sufferings of the peasantry, whose conduct was not more reprehensible, nor more illegal, than that of the landed proprietors, in resisting the tithe of Agistment;—this example, before the eyes of an ignorant and unthinking multitude, (which, from the success that followed the efforts of the landed proprietors in 1735, was peculiarly calculated to animate and encourage the peasantry to imitation,) should have been taken into account by those legislators, who, while they consigned to death and to ignominy the poorest people of the country, persevered in withholding from the clergy those rights, which, by law, they were entitled to-by refusing to pay the tithe of Agistment; which, if paid, might have removed

* It was resolved by the Irish parliament, that the tithe of Agistment was oppres sive to the great landholders, and injurious to the protestant interests.