principle to adopt in collecting the
sense of the people with respect to laws or taxes, it must also be a
useful and fair principle to resort to, in every other instance, where
great bodies of men are permitted to express their common sense as they
are _unquestionably_ in petitioning for redress of grievances, &c. No,
Englishmen! it was not because the Convention was unconstitutional as
being representative, but because it was chosen to recommend, as the
sense of the Irish people (for the Volunteers of that day were people of
Ireland,)--a parliamentary reform, and to consider of a specific plan.
It was this that the corrupt part of the Irish Government dreaded. They
had been stunned by the unexpected blow struck by the people in
asserting the independence of the legislature: for whatever credit the
Parliament of that day may assume for the part which they acted in that
business, it requires no argument to prove to a discerning man, that
they were passive instruments in the people's hand--they only re-echoed
the voice of an armed nation which they conceived too loud to be
smothered, and were hurried on irresistibly by that enthusiastic
sentiment for national independence, which the ability of _one_ great
mind, aided by a fortunate concurrence of existing circumstances, had
excited. But at the period I now speak of, the party of the British
Minister had recovered from the astonishment into which the successful
and prompt energy of the nation had thrown him. He now began to reflect
on the extensive consequence which must follow from the restoration to
Ireland of the right of legislating for herself. It was soon felt, that
there now remained in the hands of the court faction in Ireland, only
one instrument by which the effect of the recent revolution could be
checked or frustrated; and that was, the borough system. It was seen,
that whatever nominal independence the Irish legislature might have
attained, yet while a majority of the Commons' House was constituted of
members returned immediately by the crown influence, the will of the
crown or the will of the British Cabinet must still be the law which
would bind Ireland. To preserve the borough system then, at all hazards,
became from that moment the great object of the dominating faction. The
Convention was an engine which seemed to threaten its immediate and
complete overthrow; it was therefore resolved, by all means, to effect
its ruins. The staunch hounds which had fatten