[28]
hearts of his people. But what is the dictum of theory to the conviction of experiment? The interests of King and people must be separate, or wherefore all the treasons, rebellions, civil wars, oppression, violence, and butcheries that have distracted the world these three thousand years? The whole tenor of his present Majesty's reign demonstrates the fact. The laws invested the King with the negative; no part of the prerogative is more defined, and if he leaves one of his best privileges much longer in a state of inaction, a stubborn people may be induced by and by, to dispute its constitutional authority, from the antiquity of its operation.
The Earl of Shelburne is supposed to have immersed himself, in declaring that "he would never listen to the sound of a King in Ireland." Perhaps the noble Lord has great reliance upon the Irish parliament. Experience justifies a confidence in that assembly, which has appeared to the world more than once, within the last two years, to yield in virtue and spirit to no senate of Greece, Rome, or Britain in their purest days, but superior to each, with a defined object, and animated by the first of motives, yet before the close of each sessions, to be the most ser-
