You shortened the
credit given to the crown to six months; you hung up the public credit
of your kingdom by a thread; you refused to raise any taxes, whilst you
confessed the public debt and public exigencies to be great and urgent
beyond example. You certainly acted in a great style, and on sound and
invincible principles. But if we in the opposition, which fills Ireland
with such loyal horrors, had even attempted, what we never did even
attempt, the smallest delay or the smallest limitation of supply, in
order to a constitutional coercion of the crown, we should have been
decried by all the court and Tory mouths of this kingdom, as a desperate
faction, aiming at the direct ruin of the country, and to surrender it
bound hand and foot to a foreign enemy. By actually doing what we never
ventured to attempt, you have paid your court with such address, and
have won so much favor with his Majesty and his cabinet, that they have,
of their special grace and mere motion, raised you to new titles, and
for the first time, ill a speech from the throne, complimented you with
the appellation of "faithful and loyal,"--and, in order to insult our
low-spirited and degenerate obedience, have thrown these epithets and
your resistance together in our teeth! What do you think were the
feelings of every man who looks upon Parliament in an higher light than
that of a market-overt for legalizing a base traffic of votes and
pensions, when he saw you employ such means of coercion to the crown, in
order to coerce our Parliament through _that_ medium? How much his
Majesty is pleased with _his_ part of the civility must be left to his
own taste.
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