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tion, and the shame of an assembly of Irish gentlemen, than to find the people so stripped of all share in the representation, as that the most respectable class of our fellow-citizens, men who had acquired wealth upon the noblest principle, the practice of commercial industry and integrity, could be made the butts of such idle and unavailing, such shameful abuse, without the possibility of having an opportunity to vindicate themselves; when men of that class can be exposed to the degradation of unanswered calumny, or the more bitter degradation of eleemosynary defence?

Mr. Curran touched upon a variety of other topics, and concluded with the most forcible appeal to the minister, to the house, and to the country, upon the state of public affairs at home and abroad. He insisted that the measure was not, as it had been stated to be, a measure of mere internal policy; it was a measure that involved the question of right and wrong, of just and unjust but it was more, it was a measure of the most absolute necessity, which could not be denied, and which could not safely be delayed. He could not, he said, foresee future events; he could not be appalled by the future, for he could not see it; but the present he could see, and he could not but see that it was big with danger; it might be the crisis of political life, or political extinction; it was a time fairly to state to the country, whether they had any thing, and what to fight for; whether they are to struggle for a connexion of tyranny, or of privilege; whether the administration of England will let us condescend to forgive the insolence of her happier days; or whether, as the beams of her prosperity have wasted and consumed us, so even the frosts of her adversity shall perform the deleterious effects of fire, and burn upon our privileges and our hopes for ever.

SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN,

IN BEHALF OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. FOR A LIBEL IN THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH, IRELAND.

ON THE 29TH OF JANUARY, 1794.

The Society of United Irishmen at Dublin, to the Volunteers of Ire land. William Drennan, Chairman; Archibald Hamilton Row an, Secretary.

Be it remembered, that the right honourable Arthur Wolfe, attorney-general of our present sovereign lord the king, gives the court here to understand and be informed, that Archibald Hamilton Rowan, of the city of Dublin, Esq. being a person of a wicked and turbulent disposition, did on the sixteenth day of December, in the thirty-third year of the reign of our present sovereign lord George the third, publish a certain false, wicked, malicious, scandalous, and seditious libel, that is to say:

"CITIZEN SOLDIERS,-You first took up arms to protect your country from foreign enemies and from domestic disturbance; for the same purpose it now becomes necessary that you should resume them; a proclamation has been issued in England for embodying the militia, and a proclamation has been issued by the lord lieutenant and council in Ireland, for repressing all seditious associations. In consequence of both these proclamations it is reasonable to apprehend danger from abroad and danger at home; from whence but from apprehended dan

That the reader may better understand several passages of the following speech, an abstract of the information filed by the attorney-general against Mr. Rowan is prefixed.

268

SPEECH IN BEHALF OF A. H. ROWAN, Esq.

ger are these menacing preparations for war drawn through the streets of this capital? for whence, if not to create that internal commotion which was not found, to shake that credit which was not affected, to blast that volunteer honour which was hitherto inviolate, are those terrible suggestions and rumours and whispers that meet us at every corner, and agitate at least our old men, our women, and our children: whatever be the motive, or from whatever quarter it arises, alarm has arisen; and you, volunteers of Ireland, are therefore summoned to arms at the instance of government, as well as by the responsibility attached to your character, and the permanent obligations of your institution. We will not at this day condescend to quote authorities for the right of having and of using arms, but we will cry aloud, even amidst the storm raised by the witchcraft of a proclamation, that to your formation was owing the peace and protection of this island, to your relaxation has been owing its relapse into impotence and insignificance, to your renovation must be owing its future freedom and its present tranquillity: you are therefore summoned to arms, in order to preserve your country in that guarded quiet which may secure it from external hostility, and to maintain that internal regimen throughout the land, which, superseding a notorious police or a suspected militia, may preserve the blessings of peace by a vigilant preparation for war.-Citizen soldiers, to arms! Take up the shield of freedom and the pledges of peace -peace, the motive and end of your virtuous institution-war, an occasional duty, ought never to be made an occupation; every man should become a soldier in the defence of his rights; no man ought to continue a soldier for offending the rights of others: the sacrifice of life in the service of our country is a duty much too honourable to be intrusted to mercenaries; and at this time, when your country has, by public authority, been declared in danger, we conjure you by your interest, your duty, and your glory, to stand to your arms, and in spite of a police, in spite of a fencible militia, in virtue of two proclamations, to maintain good order in your vicinage, and tranquillity in Ireland: it is only by the military array of men in whom they confide, whom they have been accustomed to revere as the guardians of domestic peace, the protectors of their liberties and lives, that the present agitation of the people can be stilled, that tumult and licentiousness can be repressed, obedience secured to

existing law, and a calm confidence diffused through the public mind in the speedy resurrection of a free constitution, of liberty and of equality,-words which we use for an opportunity of repelling calumny, and of saying, that by liberty we never understood unlimited freedom, nor by equality the levelling of property or the destruction of subordination; this is a calumny invented by that faction, or that gang, which misrepresents the king to the people, and the people to the king, traduces one half of the nation to cajole the other, and by keeping up mistrust and division wishes to continue the proud arbitrators of the fortune and fate of Ireland: liberty is the exercise of all our rights, natural and political, secured to us and our posterity by a real representation of the people: and equality is the extension of the constituent to the fullest dimensions of the constitution, of the elective franchise to the whole body of the people, to the end that government, which is collective power, may be guided by collective will, and that legislation may originate from public reason, keep pace with public improvement, and terminate in public happiness. If our constitution be imperfect, nothing but a reform in representation will rectify its abuses; if it be perfect, nothing but the same reform will perpetuate its blessings. We now address you as citizens, for to be citizens you became soldiers, nor can we help wishing that all soldiers, partaking the passions and interests of the people, would remember, that they were once citizens, that seduction made them soldiers, but nature made them men. We address you without any authority save that of reason, and if we obtain the coincidence of public opinion, it is neither by force nor stratagem, for we have no power to terrify, no artifice to cajole, no fund to seduce; here we sit without mace or beadle, neither a mystery, nor a craft, nor a corporation; in four words lies all our power-universal emancipation and representative legislature—yet we are confident, that on the pivot of this principle, a convention, still less a society, still less a single man, will be able first to move and then to raise the world: we therefore wish for catholic emancipation without any modification, but still we consider this necessary enfranchisement as merely the portal to the temple of national freedom; wide as this entrance is, wide enough to admit three millions, it is narrow when compared to the capacity and comprehension of our beloved principle, which takes in every individual of the Irish nation, casts an equal eye

over the whole island, embraces all that think, and feels for all that suffer: the catholic cause is subordinate to our cause, and included in it; for, as united Irishmen, we adhere to no sect, but to society-to no cause, but christianity--to no party, but the whole people. In the sincerity of our souls do we desire catholic emancipation but were it obtained to-morrow, to-morrow would we go on as we do to-day, in the pursuit of that reform, which would still be wanting to ratify their liberties as well as our own. For both these purposes it appears necessary that provincial conventions should assemble preparatory to the convention of the protestant people; the delegates of the catholic body are not justified in communicating with individuals or even bodies of inferior authority, and therefore an assembly of a similar nature and organization is necessary to establish an intercourse of sentiments, an uniformity of conduct, an united cause and an united nation; if a convention on the one part does not soon follow, and is not soon connected with that on the other, the common cause will split into the partial interest, the people will relapse into inattention and inertness, the union of affection and exertion, will dissolve, and too probably some local insurrections, instigated by the malignity of our common enemy, may commit the character, and risk the tranquillity of the island, which can be obviated only by the influence of an assembly arising from, assimilated with the people, and whose spirit may be, as it were, knit with the soul of the nation: unless the sense of the protestant people be on their part as fairly collected, and as judicially directed, unless individual exertion consolidates into collective strength, unless the particles unite into one mass; we may, perhaps, serve some person or some party for a little, but the public not at all: the nation is neither insolent, nor rebellious, nor seditious; while it knows its rights, it is unwilling to manifest its powers; it would rather supplicate administration to anticipate revolution by welltimed reform, and to save their country in mercy to themselves. The fifteenth of February approaches, a day ever memorable in the annals of the country as the birth-day of new Ireland: let parochial meetings be held as soon as possible, let each parish return delegates, let the sense of Ulster be again declared from Dungannon on a day auspicious to union, peace, and freedom. and the spirit of the North will again become the spirit of the nation. The civil assembly ought to claim the attendance of the

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