the people; and sober and thinking men might reasonably have hoped that the stock of grievances was exhausted, and that they might have been allowed some short respite from popular ferment. In this expectation, however, we have been deceived, and when every other topick of discontent had failed, the government and constitution, as established at the revolution, has been discovered by the gentlemen who pledged themselves, in 1789, to defend and maintain it to the last drop of their blood, to be a slavish monopoly, inconsistent with the civil and religious liberties of the people. And is the noble lord so credulous in this instance as to suppose that if this new project should succeed, and the slavish monopoly of the revolution was abolished, the account of grievances would be closed-Uno avulso non deficit alter, & simili frondescit Virga metallo.

If the noble lord wishes to know the genuine source of ostensible Irish grievances, he will be enabled to trace it to some of his political friends and connexions in Great Britain and Ireland. The genuine source of Irish complaint against the British government is, that they will not second the ambitious views of some gentlemen who claim an exclusive right to guide the publick mind, and to monopolize to themselves and their dependants the power and patronage of the crown. The genuine cause of complaint against the British cabinet is, that they will not suffer these gentlemen to erect an aristocratick power in Ireland which shall enable them to dictate to the crown and the people; which shall enable them to direct and control the administration of Great Britain, by making the government of this country impracticable by any but their political friends and allies. Upon what just grounds these arrogant pretensions are advanced, I have not as yet been enabled to discover. I am willing to give the noble lord full credit for the sincerity of his professions, and to believe that his object is to tranquillize this giddy and distracted country, and therefore I will take the liberty most earnestly to advise him not to renew the strange exaggerated statements which he has been in the habit of making on Irish affairs in the British house of lords, where they can have no other effect than mischief. Let me advise him also most earnestly to exert the influence which his high name and character must give him with his political connexions in Great Britain, to induce them to confine their political warfare to the theatre of their own country, and to cease to dabble in dirty Irish faction. It is one great misfortune of this country that the people of England know less of it, than they know perhaps of any other nation in Europe. Their impressions I do verily believe to be received from newspapers, published for the sole purpose of deceiving them. There is not so volatile nor so credulous a nation in Europe as the Irish. The people are naturally well disposed, but are more open to seduction than any man would credit, who had not lived amongst them. If I am to speak without disguise, civilisation has not made any considerable progress amongst us, and therefore the kingdom of Ireland is, of all the nations of Europe, the most dangerous to tamper with, or to make experiments upon. Her present disturbed and distracted state has certainly been the consequence of a series of experiments practised upon her for a course of years. If the gentlemen of Ireland who have a permanent interest in the safety of the state, could be prevailed upon to adjourn their political quarrels and resentments to a period when they might be renewed, without endangering every thing which is worth preserving in society, and to unite against the common enemy, I should feel no manner of apprehension for the event of the contest in which we are engaged, with foreign and domestick enemies. But whilst we are divided, and men of rank and character are found ready to hazard every thing for the possible success of little paltry personal objects, the crisis becomes awful indeed. If Ireland is to be tranquillized, the first step towards it must be, to crush rebellion. No lenity will appease the factious rancour of modern Irish reformers, nor will any measure of conciliation satisfy them short of a pure democracy, established by the influence, and guarantied by the power of the French republick.

MR. PITT'S SPEECH,

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 3, 1800, ON A MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS TO THE THRONE, APPROVING OF THE ANSWERS RETURNED TO THE COMMUNICATIONS FROM FRANCE, RELATIVE TO A NEGOTIATION FOR PEACE.

As soon as the "wily Corsican" had usurped the throne of his murdered sovereign, it became his policy to conclude at least a temporary peace, that he might the more speedily recruit the exhausted strength of France, and fix those arrangements by which security was to be given to his own "bad eminence" and violently acquired authority. With this design, overtures of peace were made to England in a letter highly conciliatory, which he wrote himself to the king. They were not, however, accepted. The answer to the letter by lord Grenville, then secretary of state, expressed as the ground of the refusal to negotiate, a distrust of the stability of the existing government of France, but at the same time declared, that whenever a prospect of a lasting peace should be afforded, the king would most cheerfully concert with his allies the means of effecting it.

The propositions of the Chief Consul being laid before parliament, the rejection of them was vehemently attacked by the opposition, and as warmly vindicated by the ministry. The two distinguished rivals, Pitt and Fox, never appeared to greater advantage than in that discussion. Their splendid speeches are admirably reported, and are here inserted in the order of delivery. No where are their talents better contrasted, or the distinctive features of their eloquence more delicately exhibited. These speeches are important in another respect. They present us with a distinct and authentick view of the system of politicks of the opposite parties of England, as delineated by their respective leaders, from the dawn of the French revolution. Who, in this contest won the victory, or deserved the prize, it is not easy to decide. Combatants have rarely been so equally matched.

SIR,

SPEECH, &c.

I AM induced, at this period of the debate, to offer my sentiments to the house, both from an apprehension that, at a later hour, the attention of the house must necessarily be exhausted, and because the sentiment with which the honourable and learned gentle. man* began his speech, and with which he has thought proper to conclude it, places the question precisely on that ground on which I am most desirous of discussing it. The learned gentleman seems to assume, as the foundation of his reasoning, and as the great argument for immediate treaty, that every effort to overturn the system of the French revolution must be unavailing, and that it would be not only imprudent, but almost impious to struggle longer against that order of things, which, on I know not what principle of predestination, he appears to consider as immortal. Little as I am inclined to accede to this opinion, I am not sorry that the honourable gentleman has contemplated the subject in this serious view. I do indeed consider the French revolution as the severest trial which the visitation of Providence has ever yet inflicted upon the nations of the earth; but I cannot help reflecting, with satisfaction, that this country, even under such a trial, has not only been exempted from those calamities which have covered almost every other part of Europe, but appears to have been reserved as a refuge and asylum to those who fled from its persecution, as a barrier to oppose its progress, and perhaps ultimately as an instrument to deliver the world from the crimes and miseries which have attended it.

Under this impression, I trust, the house will forgive me, if I endeavour, as far as I am able, to take a large and comprehensive view of this important question. In doing so, I agree with my honourable friend, that it would, in any case, be impossible to separate the present discussion from the former crimes and atrocities of the French revolution; because both the papers now on the table, and the whole of the learned gentleman's argument, force upon our consideration, the origin of the war, and all the material facts which have occurred during its continuance. The learned gentleman has revived and retailed all those arguments from his own pamphlet, which had before passed through thirty-seven or thirty-eight editions in print, and now gives them to the house, embellished by the graces of his personal delivery. The first consul has also thought fit to revive and retail the chief arguments used by all the opposition speakers, and all the opposition publishers, in this country during the last seven years. And (what is still more material) the question itself, which is now immediately at issue-the question, whether under the present circumstances, there is such a prospect of security from any treaty with France, as ought to induce us to negotiate, cannot be properly decided upon, without retracing, both from our own experience, and from that of other nations, the nature, the causes, and the magnitude of the danger, against which we have to guard, in order to judge of the security which we ought to accept.

I say then, that before any man can concur in opinion with that learned gentleman; before any man can think that the substance of his majesty's answer is any other than the safety of the country required;