even the preliminary steps towards a negotiation for peace, without relinquishing all hope of indemnity for the hazard and expense of the war, and without renouncing all prospect of security against the designs of France. We must augment her resources; we must aggrandize her dominion; we must recognise and confirm her principles of government; we must abandon our allies to her mercy; we must let her loose to prey at discretion upon the whole continent of Europe; and after having, by this unconditional grant, furnished her with the most formidable means of universal aggression, we are to confide in the words of a treaty for our sole protection against the common danger. Then might be applied to our weakness and infatuation the words of a sacred writer, once before applied to a nation under the influence of a similar delusion.

"Ye have said, we have made a covenant with death, and with the grave are we at agreement; when the overflowing plague shall pass through, it shall not

come unto us."

"But your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with the grave shall not stand, when the overflowing plague shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it." And trodden down we shall be, if we shrink from our duty on this day. For how can we indulge the visionary hope, that in the general plunder of property, in the destruction of order and government, in the wreck of civil society, the British empire alone shall be spared? How can we delude ourselves with the vain imagination that France, in the plenitude of her power, and in the full career of her success will respect that nation alone, which is the avowed and peculiar object of her hatred, which offers the strongest temptation to her insatiable avarice, and opposes the most effectual obstacle to her licentious ambition?

Thus, sir, I have endeavoured to prove, that the original justice and necessity of this war have been strongly confirmed by subsequent events. That the

general result of the last campaign, both upon our own situation and upon that of the enemy, affords a reasonable expectation of ultimate success; and that not only the characters, the interests, and the dispositions of those who now exercise the powers of government in France, but the very nature of that system which they have established render a treaty of peace upon safe or honourable terms impracticable in the present moment, and consequently require a vigorous and unremitting prosecution of the war.

Hitherto, I have addressed my arguments to the whole house; in what I shall now urge, I must declare, that I do not mean to address myself to those few among us who did not share the common sentiment of the house, and of the publick in that period of general alarm, which immediately preceded this war. But I appeal to those, who previous to the commencement of the war felt in common with the great body of the people a well grounded apprehension for the safety of our happy constitution, and the general interest of civil society. Do they now feel the same degree of anxiety? Even in the midst of hostilities, in the very heat of the contest, and after a campaign which, although greatly successful in its general result, has neither been exempt from difficulty, nor from the ordinary vicissitudes of a state of war; do they not now feel in their own breasts, and perceive in the publick mind such a degree of confidence in the security of all that can be dear and valuable to British subjects, as they would have gladly purchased before the war, even by surrendering a part of those interests, the whole of which was menaced in that gloomy period of general consternation?

What change of circumstances, what happy combination of events has calmed the anxiety, and revived the depressed spirits of the nation?

Is it the decree of counterfraternity declaring, that France will no longer interfere in the internal affairs of independent states, but reserving to her the sovereignty of all those countries which were overrun

by her arms in the first career of her inordinate ambition? Is it the reply of Robespierre to the manifestos of all the princes of Europe, in which he pronounces kings to be the masterpiece of human corruption; in which he libels every monarch in Europe, but protests that France has no intention to disturb monarchy, if the subjects of kings are still weak enough to submit to such an institution? Is it the murder of Brissot and his associates? Is it the disgrace and imprisonment of Anacharsis Clootz, the author of the Revolu. tionary Diplomaticks; or of Thomas Paine, the author of the Rights of Man? Is it any profession, assurance, or act of the revolutionary government of France? You all know it is not. The confidence of a wise people could never be rested on such weak and unsubstantial foundations. The real cause of our present sense of security is to be found in our own exertions combined with those of our allies. By those exertions we were enabled to withsand and repel the first assault of the arms and principles of France; and the continuance of the same effort now forms our only barrier against the return of the same danger. Who then shall venture to persuade you to cast away the defence which has afforded you protection against all the objects of your former apprehension, to subvert the foundations of your present confidence, and to resort for your future safety to the inconsistent decrees, to the contradictory declarations, and to the vague assurances of a guilty, desperate, and distracted faction, which offers no possible ground of security either in the principles of its policy, or in the stability of its power? All the circumstances of your situation are now before you. You are now to make your option: you are now to decide, whether it best becomes the dignity, the wisdom, and the spirit of a great nation to rely for her existence on the arbitrary will of a restless and implacable enemy, or on her own sword. You are now to decide, whether you will intrust to the valour and skill of British fleets and British armies, to the approved faith and united strength of your numerous and powerful allies the

defence of the limited monarchy of these realms, of the constitution of parliament, of all the established ranks and orders of society among us, of the sacred rights of property, and of the whole frame of our laws, our liberty, and our religion; or whether you will deliver over the guardianship of all these blessings to the justice of Cambon, the plunderer of the Netherlands, who to sustain the baseless fabrick of his depreciated assignats, defrauds whole nations of their rights of property, and mortgages the aggregate wealth of Europe;-to the moderation of Danton, who first promulgated that unknown law of nature which ordains, that the Alps, the Pyrenees, the ocean, and the Rhine should be the only boundaries of the French dominion;-to the religion of Robespierre, whose practice of piety is the murder of his own sovereign, who exhorts all mankind to embrace the same faith, and to assassinate their kings for the honour of God;-to the friendship of Barrere, who avows in the face of all Europe, that the fundamental article of the revolutionary government of France is the ruin and annihilation of the British empire ;-or finally, to whatever may be the accidental caprice of any new band of malefactors, who, in the last convulsions of their exhausted country, may be destined to drag the present tyrants to their own scaffolds, to seize their lawless power, to emulate the depravity of their example, and to rival the enormity of their

crimes.

MR. CURRAN'S SPEECH,

ON THE RIGHT OF ELECTION OF LORD MAYOR OF THE CITY OF DUBLIN. DELIVERED BEFORE THE LORD LIEUTENANT AND PRIVY COUNCIL OF IRELAND.-1790.

OF

F this case the orator is the best historian: the speech itself reviews with such minute exactness all the circumstances which gave it birth. It is a fine example of that species of narration which is peculiar to the bar; and falls very little below the points of excellence, to which Cicero attained, in the famous pleading pro Milone.

It is not, however, wholly superfluous to mention the event of the trial. Curran's eloquence, like that of the orator of antiquity, in the case recently alluded to, did not prevail though its powers were so plausibly exerted.

The election of alderman James, the antagonist of Mr. Curran's client, was confirmed.

MY LORDS,

SPEECH, &c.

I HAVE the honour to appear before you as counsel for the commons of the corporation of the metropolis of Ireland, and also for Mr. Alderman Howison, who hath petitioned for your approbation of him as a fit person to serve as lord mayor, in virtue of his election by the commons to that high office; and in that capacity I rise to address you on the most im