mitted to take and dispose of leases, and priests and
schoolmasters were no longer liable to prosecution.

Grattan had entered Parliament in the year 1775. In 1779 he addressed
the House on the subject of a free trade[558] for Ireland; and on the
19th of April, 1780, he made his famous demand for Irish independence.
His address, his subject, and his eloquence were irresistible. "I wish
for nothing," he exclaimed, "but to breathe in this our land, in common
with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, unless
it be the ambition to break your chain and to contemplate your glory. I
never will be satisfied as long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a
link of the British chain clinging to his rags; he may be naked, but he
shall not be in irons. And I do see the time is at hand, the spirit is
gone forth, the declaration is planted; and though great men should
apostatize, yet the cause will live; and though the public speaker
should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ which conveyed
it; and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, will not
die with the prophet, but survive him."

The country was agitated to the very core. A few links of the chain had
been broken. A mighty reaction set in after long bondage. The
newly-freed members of the body politic were enjoying all the delicious
sensations of a return from a state of disease to a state o partial
health. The Celt was not one to be stupefied or numbed by long
confinement; and if the restraint were loosened a little more, he was
ready to bound into the race of life, joyous and free, too happy to
mistrust, and too generous not to forgive his captors. But, alas! the
freedom was not yet granted, and the joy was more in prospect of what
might be, than in thankfulness of what was.

[Illustration: Grattan demanding Irish Independence.]

The Volunteer Corps, which had been formed in Belfast in 1779, when the
coast was threatened by privateers, had now risen to be a body of
national importance. They were reviewed in public, and complimented by
Parliament. But they were patriots. On the 28th of December, 1781, a few
of the leading members of the Ulster regiments met at Charlemont, and
convened a meeting of delegates from all the Volunteer Associations, at
Dungannon, on the 15th of February, 1782. The delegates assembled on the
appointed day, and Government dared not prevent or interrupt their
proceedings. Colonel William Irvine pres