Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/267

JOHN E. REDMOND the great measure which Grattan, backed by the Irish Volunteers, passed into law. The act of George I was repealed, and the English act of the 23d of George III., chapter 28, solemnly declared as follows: "Be it enacted that the right claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by his majesty and the Parliament of that kingdom in all cases whatsoever, shall be, and is hereby declared and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time hereafter be questioned or questionable." Well, we know that eighteen years after that solemn declaration it was disregarded, and the Irish Parliament, which lasted for five hundred years, was destroyed by the Act of Union. Gentlemen, the Act of Union was carried by force and fraud, by treachery and falsehood. Speaking to an ordinary Irish audience it is unnecessary for me to labor these facts, but I hope you will forgive me if I attempt, in a few observations, to place our case upon record just as if we were making our case to England and not speaking here upon Irish soil. Mr. Lecky, in the second volume of his history, says: "The sacrifice of nationality was extorted by the most enormous corruption in the history of representative institutions. It was demanded by no considerable portion of the Irish people; it was effected without a dissolution, in opposition to the universal majority of the representatives of the counties and considerable towns, and to innumerable addresses from all parts of the country. The Union was a crime of deepest 257