panied with extraordinary profession of publie parsimony, is a detestable principle-hypocrisy added to extravagance! My great objection to the Marquis of Buckingham is not merely that he has been a jobber, but a jobber in a mask :my objection is not merely that his adminis. tration has been expensive, but that his expenses are accompanied with hypocrisy-it is the affec. tation of economy, attended with a great deal of good, comfortable, substantial jobbing for himself and his friends.

"This leads to another measure of the Marquis of Buckingham, which is the least ce. remonious, and the most sordid and scandalous act of self interest, attended with the sacrifice of all public decorum; I mean the disposal of the reversion of the place of the, Chief Remembrancer to his brother-one of the best, if not the very best office in the kingdom, given in reversion to an absentee, with a great patronage, and а compensation annexed. This most sordid and shameless act was committed exactly about the time when this kingdom was charged with great pensions for the bringing home, as it was termed, absentee employments. This bringing home absentee employments was a monstrous job; the king.

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dom paid the value of the employment, and perhaps more; she paid the value of the tax also. The pensioner so paid was then suffered to sell both to a resident, who was free from the tax; he was then permitted to substitute new and young lives in the place of his own, and then permitted to make a new account against the country, and to receive a further compensation, which he was suffered in the same manner to dispose of. In excuse for this sort of traffic we were told, that we are not buying places, but principles, the principle of confining the great employments of this country to residents; a principle invaluable, we were told, to her pride and her interest. While we were thus buying back principles, and while the Marquis of Buckingham was professing a disinterested regard for the prosperity of Ireland, in opposition to the principles and the professions, he disposes of the best reversion in Ireland to his own family; the only family in the world that cannot, with decency, receive it, as he is the only man in the world that cannot with decency dispose of it to them. After this, do not call Lord Buckingham disinterested; call him any thing else; give him any appellation you please of ability or activity, but do not call him a public reformer; do not

ridicule him, by calling him a disinterested

man.

"Gentlemen have spoken about public inconstancy, and have dwelt on the rapid turn of the public mind, in despising now what a year ago it seemed to idolize; but let those gentle. men reflect a little. When a man in a high situation professes to be a reformer-when he exclaims against the profusion and memory of his predecessor;-when he teaches the people to deceive themselves ;-enfeoffs himself to popularity-shakes hands with the populace-when such a man agrees to no one constitutional or œconomic bill-on the contrary, resists mo tions for disallowing extravagance-and bills tending to secure the country against future extravagance, and sets up his own temporary regulations, his own contingent savings-and casual fractions of economy, in the place of laws-such a man must speedily forfeit the opinion of the public; but when the same man shall, to the crime of omission, add that of commission; shall increase the expenses of which he complained on the principle which he affected to reprobate; multiply undue influence, and create or revive offices merely for private gratification; and finally, shall attach the best office of the kingdom to his family, while he affects to

attach the love of the public to his person: I say such a man cannot be surprized at the loss of popularity; an event, the natural consequence, not of public inconstancy, but his own inconsistency; of his great professions and his contingent savings overbalanced by his jobbing a teazing and minute industry, ending in one great principle of œconomy, and tarnished by attempts to increase the influence of cor ruption, and by a sordid and indecorous sense of private interest. For these reasons, among other public ones, which I could give, I en ter my protestation against the Marquis of Buckingham."

"After two or three Members had delivered their sentiments, Mr. Grattan, again rose, and proposed the following Amendment to the Address:

"The many

and numerous blessings this country has received, during His Majesty's reign, under the pressure of present calamity,

and shall manifest the most genuine and cora dial loyalty and attachment to our beloved Sovereign, and our most zealous regard for the united strength, and common interest, of both Kingdoms."

This Amendment was agreed to.

REGENCY, 1789.

THE debate which took place in this year, on the question of Regency, is, perhaps, one of the most interesting and important in the annals of the Irish Parliament.

No national proceedings ever so clearly and 30 unequivocally marked and distinguished the two countries, as those of the Parliaments of England and Ireland, at this very eventful period.

The great and distressing calamity with which our revered monarch was then visited, and which rendered him incapable of fulfilling the high