The House divided on this amendment of Mr. O'Donnell: the numbers were, Ayes 18, Noes, 53. Lord Castlereagh's motion that the bill be read a second time on the 26th, was then put and carried.

On this day (26th) the bill was read a second time, and on the motion that it be committed:

Mr. GRATTAN observed that the bill before the House was full of inaccuracies, but inaccuracy was the least of the objections; it did indeed refer to a schedule for duties which were not there set forth, and which were not yet passed — it did indeed recite a bill to have passed both Houses of Parliament which was at that very moment in debate before the House of Lords, and it did describe that very bill by the name of an act of parliament; (saying, that when the act, viz. a bill which had only passed one house, had the royal assent, should pass) offending against parliamentary propriety and legal phraseology with its various and great improprieties, the evident marks of haste and carelessness; but all these are lost in the fatal principle of ruin and extinction which the bill contains, whose enacting clauses are two, 1st, that there shall be a distinct and separate council, and 2dly, that there shall not be a parliament.

That is to say, that you are to have not what is miscalled a union, still less a union and a constitution of liberty, but a subordinate Irish government without the control of an Irish parliament; the inferiority, the expence, the patronage, of a second and secondary government, with all those distinctions which attend separate establishments of finance; and revenue, with a separate system of trade, with a different interest for money, and a distinct code of law. This breach of com

pact, for such I must call it this surrender of liberty, for it is nothing less this transfer of the powers of the country to Great Britain (What powers have you over India? precisely as much as you retain over Ireland) - this introduction of an innovation, consisting of a separate Irish government without an Irish parliament, is made at a time of national debility and division, the result of a rank and vicious system of government, formed to corrupt the upper order, and divide and inflame the lower, and to deprive both of their liberty; such as one part of the present British cabinet abjured, and declaring that they took office principally to reform, did greatly confirm and aggravate; at a time too of martial law, admitted under the plea of necessity, but with great effect to depress and intimidate, not rebellion but assertion- not the spirit of insurrection, but the spirit of constitution, which would have also spoken more decidedly (and yet very decidedly it has spoken notwithstanding.)

At a time, I say, when government was possessed of dictatorial power, and at a time when a spirit of innovation was abroad, which has been adopted by the ministers of the crown, who thus afford their example to overturn the throne by overturning the constitution, and teach the Jacobin, if he wanted to be taught, to make war on the rights of kings, by making a Jacobinical war on the rights of the people: the power given them to preserve the settled state of order, they use to introduce a new order of things, and make government a question of strength, not of opinion; they run the chance of future anarchy, in order to establish present despotism; they go into the very excesses they condemn, and are the bad example they deprecate; they tell the people practically and effectually, that there is a faction not less daring and destructive than the rankest democracy; a faction which, under the colour of supporting government, would eradicate the great fundamental and ancient principles of public security, as effectually, as ambitiously, and as seditiously as its rival the Jacobin; who is only guilty of an opposite excess, and who is likely to follow and march through the public breach which the slaves of despotism have made in the fundamental laws of the land, for the entrance of the two extremes in succession, Tyranny that takes the lead and Anarchy that follows.

If the principle of this bill be innovation, the terms of it are innovation likewise; the alteration in our system of commerce is innovation, the alteration in our system of revenue is innovation; the bill teems with every thing that is exceptionable; they talk to you indeed, as if for liberty surrendered you were to break down under the weight of commercial ac

quisition; they talk to you, indeed, as if for liberty surrendered you were to carry off an immense portion of English revenue; and one million a year in war, paid by England, in all distresses, was to glad and to console you, and much silly and empty sound of that kind was rung in your ears; but what is the fact, that the terms of the Union are aggravations of the Union, the principal conditions are heavy contributions. Your financial conditions are dangerous experiments, and both such as you are perfectly competent to make, provided you are disposed to do so much mischief to your country; the revenue, or the financial returns set out, with the surrender of an availing revenue of 100,000l. a year, arising from the export of the raw material and the import of the manufacture, that is the best possible revenue which a nation can continue, it adds, the creation of a deficit of 95,000l. a year, the interest to pay a loan of one million and a half, to be paid for the purchase of boroughs, that is, from one to two hundred thousand pounds a year, to be supplied by new taxes. The terms go on and propose a proportion of two to fifteen as the future contribution of Ireland; they do this without any data whatsoever which can warrant such a proposition. The data which are now before you, but which were not before you when you passed the resolution, and when that proposition was laid, are unintelligible to the gentlemen to whom that data is furnished. Their papers, for instance, state the value of the consumption of the country in certain articles, by which they affect to ascertain its opulence to be so much; and other papers, which are also before the House, state the value to be so much less. In the instance of tea, of tobacco, and some other articles, the value of the goods consumed is returned by one-third, in some cases by one-half, more than the value of the same kind of goods imported. The difference may be reconcileable, but it is not reconciled, and the House votes now the proportion of the contribution which is founded on those very papers, without waiting for, without demanding explanation. Suppose the cause, partly at least, of the apparent incongruity is, that in one set of papers they are valued subject to freight and tax, and in another set exempt from both. When the minister proceeds to value the ability of the country to pay taxes, he presents you with papers containing the value of the great articles, with the charge of freight and taxes embodied; but when he proceeds. to state the balance of trade between England and Ireland, he presents papers in which the freight and tax are omitted: thus coals (it is one among other instances) are valued at the pit mouths, and thus an apparent balance of trade is created in your favour, about 800,000l. more than the fact; so that

by the double operation, you are over-rated in commerce, and over-rated in revenue. I say, therefore, that in fixing the proportion of relative contribution, as far as that proportion affected to found itself on the comparative consumption of the respective kingdoms, you had no data. When first you voted that proportion, by way of resolution, you had not even papers; the majority of this House took the word of the ministers, without papers or documents, and on that word voted a 20 years' contribution. Since you proceeded by way of bill, a member on this side of the House called for papers; the papers are returned incongruous and unexplained, and now you vote the data which you don't understand, as before you voted without any data whatever. I speak of the comparison on the articles of consumption; let us see whether you have better information on the comparison formed on the imports and exports. Here papers are submitted, but here the inland trade is omitted; it is calculated to amount in Britain to 120,000,000l. per annum; here also the reexport trade is omitted. It is valued at 11,000,000l. per annum in Britain; in Ireland 133,000l.; in the year ending January, 1799, it is valued at 14,000,000l. in Britain. In the minister's calculation of national wealth, to ground a tax on national income, it was included, I apprehend, as a distinct substantive source of wealth; and, if it were just to comprehend it with a view to impose a tax, it is equally just to comprehend it with a view to ascertain a proportion: it is carried on by a distinct capital; it produces a distinct revenue; it is, by itself, a great trade; and it is almost the only one of some great commercial nations, Holland for instance. It is a greater evidence, and greater source of wealth, to make other nations pay for your industry, added to that of other countries, than out of the fruits of your industry, to pay for the industry of those countries.

But without enquiring farther into this head, without enquiring whether it be just to proceed on an average of three years, when it appears from a document, almost published under the name of Mr. Rose, that the imports and exports of Britain, in the year 1798, were not 73,000,000l. but 80,000,000l.; and the re-export not 11,000,000l. but 14,000,000l.; while our trade is said to have declined, inasmuch as our revenue is said to have fallen 800,000l. Without enquiring into this, I say, that the papers before you prove your contribution to be unjust; they set forth the imports and exports of Britain, for the three years, to have been 73,000,000l.; on that they form the proportion of two to fifteen; now there should be added to that 73,000,000l., 6,000,000l. per annum, which Britain receives from the Indies and from İre