First, the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, sir, is a nation which still, I hope, respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant; and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are, therefore, not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles. Abstract liberty, like many other abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favourite point which, by way of eminence, becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you know, sir, that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxation. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates, or on the balance among the several orders of the State. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exercised, the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point, it was not only necessary for those who in argument defended the excellence of the English Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind usages to reside in a certain body called the House of Commons; they went much further. They attempted to prove and they succeeded - that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons as an immediate representative of the people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. The colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, those ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe or might be endangered in twenty other particulars, without their being much pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right or wrong in applying your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is that they did thus apply those general arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the imagination that they, as well as you, had an interest in these common principles. They were further confirmed in these pleasing errors by the form of their provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are popular to a high degree; some are merely popular; in all, the popular representative is the most weighty; and this share of the people in their ordinary government never fails to inspire them with lofty sentiments and with a strong aversion from whatever tends to deprive them of their chief importance... Sir, I can perceive from their manner that some gentlemen object to the latitude of this description, because in the southern colonies the Church of England forms a large body and has a regular establishment. It is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these colonies which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the northward. It is that in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks, among them, like something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and these people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty than those to the northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such, in our days, were the Poles; and such will be all masters of slaves who are not slaves themselves. In such a people the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible. (British Orations, ed. cit., I, 210. CHAPTER XXIX UNION BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 206. The Union Advocated Castlereagh The influence of Lord Castlereagh had much to do with effecting the union. Castlereagh and Flood were probably the best hated men in Ireland, being looked upon as traitors, but they exercised a power which was undiminished by any personal scruples. That their cause prevailed was owing neither to its popularity nor its justice, but to the methods employed by its advocates and the English Government. It is said, that an union will reduce Ireland to the abject state of a colony. Is it by making her a constituent part of the greatest and first empire in the world? For my part, if I were to describe a colony, I should picture a country in a situation somewhat similar to the present state of Ireland. I should describe a country, whose crown was dependent on that of another country, enjoying a local legislature, but without any power intrusted to that legislature of regulating the succession of that crown. I should describe it as having an executive power administered by the orders of a nonresident minister, irresponsible to the colony for his acts or his advice; I should describe it as incapable of passing the most insignificant law without the licence of the minister of another country; I should describe it as a country unknown to foreign nations in the quality of an independent state, and as subject to another power with regard to all the questions which concern alliances, the declaration and conduct of war, or the negotiations for peace. Another objection has been started, that an imperial parliament cannot be possessed of such local knowledge of the kingdom as is necessary for the due encouragement of its interests. But I ask, what is there to prevent the representatives of Ireland from carrying with them to the imperial parliament all their local knowledge of the wants and interests of Ireland? And what is there to prevent an imperial parliament from attending as anxiously to the concerns of this part of the empire, as to the concerns of the west of England, or the affairs of Scotland? It has also been asserted, that an union would have the effect of weakening the executive power in Ireland. Convinced as I am, that Ireland cannot exist without a strong executive power, and that the lives and properties of its loyal inhabitants cannot be otherwise secured, I could not argue in favour of the advantages which are promised by this measure, were it to be followed by such a consequence. But I am so confident of the opposite effect, that it is upon this very principle of giving new vigor to the executive power, and of giving additional security to the persons and properties of the inhabitants, that I embrace the measure. It is an union alone that can give us strength, by removing the cause of our weakness. It will take away from the executive power all those jealousies, which hang upon its motions and prevent its constitutional effects: it will preclude the plausible insinuation, that we are governed by the influence of a parliament in which we are not represented; that we are directed by the counsels of ministers who are irresponsible; that our interests are sacrificed to those of Great Britain; in short, it will remove all those constitutional awkwardnesses and anomalies which render all the exertions of the executive power suspected and inefficient, and, by rendering it unpopular, diminish and counteract its influence. There is another objection, which has been strongly urged and plausibly supported. It is this that our parliament has, from the circumstance of its being local, been able to make exertions for suppressing the rebellion, which an imperial parliament would not have attempted. I most cordially admit, that the Irish parliament has most materially assisted the government by arming it with those ample powers which have been employed to suppress the rebellion. But, if it was parliament that gave the powers, it was the cabinet that employed them. And I ask, by what constitutional scruples would an imperial parliament be prevented from giving the same powers in similar circumstances, or the ministers of the empire be arrested in the exercise of them? And is it agreeable to common sense, or truth, that the acts of the parliament of the empire would have less authority than the acts of only a part of the empire? It has also been said, that a local parliament alone could have traced and developed the conspiracy which produced the late rebellion. Here is a mistake in point of fact. It was not the local parliament, but the executive government which discovered the conspiracy. It was the government that detected the plans of the traitors; and it was upon the documents produced by the government that the accurate report of the secret committee was formed. The merits of the report in disclosing the information as a warning to the public, after the treason was detected and defeated, may be ascribed to the parliament; but the discovery of the conspiracy, and the suppression of the rebellion, arose from the energies of the executive government... Having now gone through the outline of the plan with as much conciseness as possible, I trust I have proved to every man who hears me, that the proposal is such an one as is at once honourable for Great Britain to offer, and for Ireland to accept. It is one which will entirely remove from the executive power those anomalies which are the perpetual sources of jealousy and discontent. It is one which will relieve the apprehensions of those who feared that Ireland was, in consequence of an union, to be burthened with the debt of Britain. It is one which, by establishing a fair principle of contribution, tends to release Ireland from an expence of one million in time of war, and of £500,000 in time of peace. It is one which increases the resources of our commerce, protects our manufactures, secures to us the British market, and encourages all the produce of our soil. It is one that, by uniting the ecclesiastical establishments, and consolidating the legislatures of the empire, puts an end to religious jealousy, and removes the possibility of separation. It is one that places the great question, which has so long agitated the country, upon the broad principles of imperial policy, and divests it of all its local difficulties. It is one that establishes such a representation of the country, as must lay asleep for ever the question of parliamentary reforms, which, combined with our religious divisions, has produced all our distractions and calamities. (History of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland, C. Coote, Lond., 1802. p. 339.) 207. Grattan Opposes the Union Grattan The projected union of Ireland with Great Britain provoked bitter hostility in the former country. The adherents of the measure were made the objects of scathing invective by the press and their parliamentary opponents. Of those who most |