250 GRATTAN. confusedly together, those of inferior alloy, with those of the purest and most generous metal. They urged, that it was a prodigious scandal to the nation, and that for such offence, precedent there was none, and then they call for justice on the head of that man, who by making honour saleable, had rendered it contemptible. - “But there is a circumstance in the offence of the Irish ministry, which is not to be found in the case of the Duke of Buckingham; they have applied the money arising from the sale to model the House of Com mons; this is another impeachable offence; that minister who sells the honours of one House to model the repre sentation of the other, is impeachable for the last offence as well as the first; he makes a wicked, and scandalous, and illegal use of the prerogative of the crown, in order to destroy the privileges of parliament. He makes the two Houses of Parliament auxiliary, not to support, but to contaminate one another. Thus he is a conspirator against the legislation, attacking it in both Houses of Parliament, and poisoning the two great sources of the law. But this practice corrupts also the dispensation of justice as well as the fountains of the law; the sale of a peerage, is the sale of a judicial employment of the highest judicial situation; a situation whose province it is to cor rect the errors of a l l other courts; such a sale goes against the common law, and against the spirit o f every statute made o n the subject. “I say, the present ministers o f this country cannot govern Ireland, they cannot govern Ireland for England; I d o not call corruption government; not the carrying a question a t the loss o f their money and character. They have thus procured for the British government, neither character sufficient t o command respect, nor revenue suf ficient t o pay the establishments; but then they have gotten other strength, they have gotten the support and good will o f the nation. No
the loss o f the nation's good will i s synonymous with the loss o f reputation. “The independent country gentlemen never can sup
