Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/343

 Ss2 CURRAN. consequence of a people, worthy to be the ally of a mighty empire, on the firm and honourable basis of equal liberty and a common fate, standing or falling with Great Britain. But how short is the continuance of those auspicious gleams of public sunshine! How soon are they past, per- haps for ever! In what rapid and fatal revolution has Ireland seen the talents and the virtues of such men give place to a succession of sordid parade and empty preten- sion; of bloated promise and lank performance; of austere hypocrisy and peculating economy. Hence it is, my lords, that the administration of Ireland so often presents to the reader of her history, the view not of a legitimate govern- ment, but rather of an encampment in the country of a barbarous enemy; where the object of the invader is not dominion, but conquest. Where he is obliged to resort to the corruption of the clans, or of single individuals, pointed out to his notice by public abhorrence, and recommended to his confidence only by a treachery so rank and consum- mate, as precludes all possibility of their return to přivate virtne, or to public reliance; and therefore, only put into authority over a wretched country, condemned to the tor- ture of all that petulant, unfeeling asperity with which a narrow and malignant mind will bristle, in its unmerite elevation; condemned to be betrayed, and disgraced, and exhausted by the little traitors that have been suffered to nestle and to grow within it, making it at once the source of their grandeur, and the victim of their vices: reducing it to the melancholy necessity of supporting their conse- quence, and of sinking under their crimes, like the LION perishing by the poison of a reptile that finds shelter in the mane of the noble animal, while it stings him to death." " In this very chamber did the chancellor and judges sit (in the reign of Queen Anne and the chancellorship of Mr. Constantine Phipps) with all the gravity and affected attention to arguments io favour of that liberty, and those rights which they had conspired to destroy. But to what end, my lords, offer argument to such men ? A little and a