264 GRATTAN. During the melancholy year of 1798, Mr. Grattan ap pears to have resided principally at Twickenham, from whence, on the 9th of November, he addressed a letter to the guild of merchants, corporation of Dublin, and fellows of Trinity College, in defence of his character and conduct from their unfounded and malevolent attacks. Mr. Grattan having been elected for the borough of Wicklow, in the parliament of 1800, was sworn in on the 15th of January, and on that eventful day, when the grand question of the Union was before parliament, about three o'clock in the morning, Mr. Grattan entered the House between Mr. W. B. Ponsonby and Mr. A. Moore, whilst Mr. Egan was on his legs actually referring to the consti tution of 1782. The re-appearance in parliament of the founder of that constitution, at that critical moment, and under those awful circumstances, electrified the House and galleries with an indescribable emotion of terrific joy and expecta tion. On rising to speak, he referred to the adjustment of 1782. The minister of Great Britain, he said, had come forward in two celebrated productions; he declared his intolerance of the parliamentary constitution of Ire land; that constitution, which he ordered the several viceroys to celebrate, in defence of which he recommended the French war, and to which he swore the yeomen, that constitution he now declared to be a miserable imperfec tion, concurring with the men, whom he had executed for thinking the Irish parliament a grievance; differing from them in the remedy only; they proposing to substitute a republic, and he the yoke of the British parliament. They had seen him inveigh against their projects; l e t them hear him i n defence of his own: he denied i n the face of the two nations a public fact registered and recorded; h e disclaimed the final adjustment, a s being n o more than a n incipient train o f negociation. That settlement consisted o f several parts, every part a record, establishing o n the whole two grand positions: first, the admission o f Ire land's claim t o b e legislated b y n o other parliament but
