266 GRATTAN. two striking objections. First, it is no Union; it is not an identification of people, for it excludes the catholics: Secondly, it is a consolidation of the legislatures; that is to say, it merges the Irish parliament, and incurs every objection to an Union, without obtaining the only object which an Union professes: it is an extinction of the con stitution, and an exclusion of the people.” “What was the language of the minister's advocates to the catholic body ? ‘You were before the Union, as three to one; you will be by the Union as one to four.” Thus he founds their hopes of political power on the extinction of physical consequence, and makes the inanity of their body and the non-entity of their country the pillars of their future ambition. He afterwards observed, that the minister, by his first plan, as detailed by his advocates, not only excluded the catholics from parliament, but also deprived the protestants of a due representation in that assembly; that he struck off one half of the representa tives of counties, and preserved the proportion of boroughs as two to one; thus dismissing for ever the questions of catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform: that, instead of reforming abuses in church and state, he wished to entail them on posterity; that, in lieu of protestant ascendancy and catholic participation, he proposed to constitute borough ascendancy in perpetual abuse and dominion; that it was his aim to reform the British par liament by nearly sixty boroughs, and that of Ireland by nearly five hundred and fifty-eight English and Scotch members, and thus by mutual misrepresentation frame an Imperial House of Commons, who would become the host of ministers, not the representatives of the people. “Of the predicament in which the new members would be placed, he said, never was there a situation, in which men would have so much temptation to act ill, and so little to act well. Subject to great expense and conse quent distresses, having no support from the voice of an Irish public, no check, they would be in situation a sort of gentlemen of the empire, that is to say, gentlemen at
