In an address to the people of Ireland, they propose the election of five delegates from each county, city, and confiderable town, to meet in Dublin, October 25 next enfuing, in NATIONAL CONGRESS. On the 9th of August, resolutions nearly fimilar were agreed to at a general meeting of the freeholders of the county of Dublin; and a petition was also voted by them to the king for a diffolution of the present parliament. On application being made to the lord lieutenant to transmit these petitions to England, his grace without hesitation " declared it to be his duty so to do. At the same time he informed them that he should not fail to accompany them with his entire disapprobation, as they included unjust and indecent reflections upon the laws and the parliament of Ireland, and as they tended to foment fatal diffenfions among the people."

The town of Belfast, diftinguished much more for its zeal than its difcretion in the cause of liberty, nearly at the fame time voted a petition of a nature most extraordinary, and in the highest degree exceptionable, to the king, which they tranfmitted to Mr. Pitt, in order to its being presented by the minister to the sovereign. The prayer of the petition was, "That the king would be pleased to difsolve the present, and to issue the writs necessary for the assembling of a new parliament, ACCORDING to the PLAN of REPRESENTATION which should he agreed upon in the NATIONAL CONGRESS of the 25th of October." Mr. Pitt in reply very calmly and forcibly remarked, "That he had undoubtedly been and still continued a zealous friend to a reform in parliament, but he must beg leave to say that he had been so on grounds very different from those adopted in the petition. What was there proposed he confidered as tending to produce still greater evils than any of those which the friends of reform were defirous to remedy. He had great concern in differing so widely on this subject from a body of men who profeffed to be guided by motives of loyalty and reverence for the constitution: but animated mated himself by the same motives, and fincerely anxious for the profperity and freedom of every part of the British empire, he had thought it his duty to communicate to them his sentiments with fairness and precision."

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Conscious of its strength, notwithstanding the extreme unpopularity of its measures, the government of Ireland did not long content itself with a cold expression of difapprobation at the proceedings now in contemplation. The 20th of September had been fixed upon as the day for electing five delegates to represent the city of Dublin in NATIONAL CONGRESS. A short time previous to the intended meeting, Mr. Fitzgibbon, the attorney-general, wrote a letter to the sheriffs, " expressing his astonishment at having read a public summons signed by them for this purpose-and declaring them responsible for such outrageous breach of their duty to the laws of their country, and signifying his resolution to proceed officially against them." The sheriffs, in a consternation at this menace, refused to take any part in the business, After some embarrassiment and delay, five delegates were nevertheless chofen, and a resolution passed, declaring the conduct of the attorney general to be a violation of magna charta. The attorney general, holding this resolution in contempt, actually filed informations against the high sheriffs of various counties, for convening and prefiding at fimilar meetings. Notwithstanding all obstacles, the NATIONAL CONGRESS met on the 25th of October (1784). After a session of three days only, finding their numbers on the return very in complete, they adjourned to the 20th of January 1785; having previously passed several resolutions, importing, that the appointment of that assembly, and the steps that had been taken, were in entire conformity with the constitution of Ireland.

On the fame day commenced the second session of the parliament of Ireland; and in a short time Mr. Orde, fe cretary to the lord lieutenant, laid before the house in a feries series of propositions, the grand commercial regulations digested, during the recess, into a regular system. There were two plans obviously and radically different, on which a permanent arrangement might be formed on the basis of equality-1. A system of mutual prohibition. 2. A system of mutual admiffion. The propositions, eleven in number, moyed by Mr. Orde, were framed in conformity to the latter, and beyond comparison the wiser of these opposite systems.

An arrangement founded on the basis of mutual prohibition, or, in the more favorite and fashionable language of protecting duties, would have been fatal to the great staple manufactory of LINENS imported into England, not only duty-free, but with the positive advantage of a bounty. On the system of prohibition Ireland would have been totally deprived of the colonial traffic; and the city of Cork, the emporium of the kingdom, and the grand mart of the West Indian and victualling trade, would have been precipitated from the height of profperity into the depth of distress and ruin. It would have amounted to a virtual declaration of national enmity and hoftility; and there was good reason to fear lest Ireland should have funk under the weight of so unequal and dangerous a competition. On the other hand, the sys-tem of amicable equalization was open to very plausible and even serious objections.

Such was the prodigious inferiority of Ireland in almost every branch of traffic, that were the high prohibitory importation duties repealed by England, there was but little ground to hope that Ireland would for many years to come find herself materially or sensibly benefited. It was urged by Mr. Flood and other members in the opposition, that the greater object was now about to be facrificed to the lefs; Ireland had asked for bread, and England had given her a stone; she had asked for protecting duties, and she was offered equalization; amid a parade of conceffion

ceffion the real defideratum was withheld. This might be compared to the procedure of a certain company of strolling players, who advertised the tragedy of Hamlet, in which the part of Hamlet was by particular defire to be omitted. By the proposed regulations Ireland was indeed at liberty to fend her woollens to Leeds and Halifax, and her coals to Sunderland and Newcastle. England would not suffer, even under the new system, the exportation of her raw wool to Ireland; but then Ireland was at liberty, when the quality of her wool was improved, and the price lowered, to retaliate, by prohibiting the exportation of Irish wool to England-and this was called equality. The starving woollen manufacturer of Ireland was in the mean time left to perish; and if he prefumed to complain, he was told that he ought to rest satisfied, for that the linen manufacture would under the new system flourish more than ever.

By the last proposition it was refolved, " that whatever fum the grofs hereditary revenue of the kingdom should produce above the amount of the regular peace establishment, should be appropriated towards the support of the naval force of the EMPIRE, in such manner as the parliament of Ireland shall direct." This was inveighed against as a palpable collusion-an artifice by which a revenue was to be raifed in Ireland, to be afterwards applied to the advantage of Great Britain. Had England, it was asked, ever entered into a war on the account of Ireland ? Had the ever equipped a ship more than she would have done had Ireland been funk into the abyffes of the ocean ? Were Ireland entirely independent of and unconnected with England, it was forcibly afferted that the minister who should form a treaty of commerce with England on the foundation of these resolutions, would deserve to be impeached for facrificing the essential interests of Ireland. In the heat and paffion of debate, it was affirmed to be fortunate for Mr. Orde that he was at present in a civilized country; had he brought forward his plan in a Polish diet, he would not have lived to carry back his anfwer.

Notwithstanding these reasonings and invectives, the good sense and moderation of the house were well fatisfied with the conceffions made by England, so far furpassing what the most sanguine expectation a few years since could have ventured to indulge. The propofitions were received not only with approbation, but with joyful applause, and were ultimately ratified by a very decisive majority of the house. In the mean time the NATIONAL CONGRESS had continued its fittings almost unregarded. In a brief and final address to the people of Ireland, this assembly observed, " that if the abuses of former parliaments did not inspire a distrust of those which were to come if the venerable opinion of those illustrious men who were now no more, and the assistance of those whose present labors cooperated with them in the same purfuit, had no influence to awaken their fears, to animate their efforts, and to ins vigorate their hopes, this and every other endeavor must fink into oblivion; and they would shortly repose in indolent acquiefcence, under such a representation as would gall themselves and their posterity with increasing taxes and oppreffions."

After long delay Mr. Flood, on the 12th of May (1785), presented once more his bill for effecting a reform in the representation, somewhat varied from that of the last year. A previous motion of the fame fenator, " that it be an instruction to the committee appointed to prepare the bill, that no borough in the province of Connaught having less than forty, or in the other provinces having less than seventy electors, should be permitted to return more than one member to parliament," was negatived without a divifion. On the introduction of the bill Mr. Brownlow observed, "that he greatly doubted indeed whether there was virtue enough in that house to pass the bill

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