I never heard a more elaborate,
more able, more convincing, and more shameful speech. The debater
obtained credit, but the statesman was disgraced forever. Amends were
made for having refused small, but timely concessions, by an unlimited
and untimely surrender, not only of every one of the objects of former
restraints, but virtually of the whole legislative power itself which
had made them. For it is not necessary to inform you, that the
unfortunate Parliament of this kingdom did not dare to qualify the very
liberty she gave of trading with her _own_ plantations, by applying, of
her _own_ authority, any one of the commercial regulations to the new
traffic of Ireland, which bind us here under the several Acts of
Navigation. We were obliged to refer them to the Parliament of Ireland,
as conditions, just in the same manner as if we were bestowing a
privilege of the same sort on France and Spain, or any other independent
power, and, indeed, with more studied caution than we should have used,
not to shock the principle of their independence. How the minister
reconciled the refusal to reason, and the surrender to arms raised in
defiance of the prerogatives of the crown, to his master, I know not: it
has probably been settled, in some way or other, between themselves.
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