tion as well as on the advisability of continuing the volunteer convention, and on 28 Oct. 1783, in the debate on Sir Henry Cavendish's motion for retrenchment in the expenses of the country, the famous collision between the two great Irish orators took place. The speeches of both were full of the bitterest personal invective. Flood, alluding to the grant which parliament had bestowed upon Grattan, referred to him as ‘the mendicant patriot who was bought by my country for a sum of money, and then sold my country for prompt payment,’ and concluded by saying that ‘if the gentleman enters often into this kind of controversy with me, he will not have much to boast of at the end of the session.’ While Grattan, after comparing Flood to an ‘ill-omen'd bird of night with sepulchral notes, a cadaverous aspect and broken beak,’ and asserting that neither minister nor people could trust him, concluded his speech with the following words: ‘I therefore tell you in the face of your country, before all the world, and to your beard, you are not an honest man’ (ib. ii. 35–43). The quarrel nearly ended in a duel. On their way to a hostile meeting at Blackrock they were arrested and bound over to keep the peace. On 1 Nov. Flood was allowed to make a further speech in vindication of his character, in which he gave an explanation of his political conduct during the whole of his parliamentary career (ib. pp. 61–70). With this incident their friendship of twenty years terminated, but though they never became reconciled, they successfully co-operated in opposing Orde's Commercial Propositions in 1785. At the general election a few months previously Flood had been returned with Curran for the borough of Kilbeggan. In November 1783 the volunteer convention met in Dublin, and Flood was appointed assessor to the committee appointed to draw up a scheme of parliamentary reform. The Bishop of Derry brought forward the question of extending the franchise to the Roman catholics, but was successfully opposed by Flood and Charlemont. At length a comprehensive plan of reform which had been drawn up by Flood, and gave no political rights to the Roman catholics, was agreed to on 28 Nov. 1783. On the following day Flood brought forward the measure in the Irish House of Commons. The house, however, refused to receive the bill by 157 to 77 (Journals of the Irish House of Commons, xi. 144), and, resenting the interference of the volunteers, passed a resolution that it had ‘now become indispensably necessary to declare that this house will maintain its just rights and privileges against encroachments whatsoever’ (ib.) The volunteer convention was dissolved; but in March of the following year Flood again brought forward the Reform Bill. Though supported by petitions from twenty-six counties, it was rejected on the question of committal by a majority of 74 (Parl. Reg. iii. 13–23, 43–85). Meanwhile, in October 1783, Flood was returned to the English House of Commons as one of the members for Winchester, having purchased his election from the Duke of Chandos for 4,000l. His English career was a failure. As Grattan remarked, ‘he misjudged when he transferred himself to the English parliament; he forgot that he was a tree of the forest too old and too great to be transplanted at fifty’ (Grattan, Miscellaneous Works, 1822, p. 118). On 3 Dec. he took part in the debates for the first time, and made a lengthy speech against Fox's East India Bill (Parl. Hist. xxiv. 56–9). The subject was one of which he had little knowledge, and by want of tact he managed to prejudice both sides of the house against him. In a curious passage Wraxall thus refers to Flood's speech: ‘The slow, measured, and sententious style of enunciation which characterised his eloquence, however calculated to excite admiration in the sister kingdom, appeared to English ears cold, stiff, and deficient in some of the best recommendations to attention. Unfortunately, too, for Flood, one of his own countrymen, Courtenay, instantly opened upon him such a battery of ridicule and wit, seasoned with allusions or reflections of the most personal and painful kind, as seemed to overwhelm the new member’ (Memoirs, 1884, iii. 185–6). Having had a misunderstanding with the Duke of Chandos, Flood was not returned again for Winchester at the general election in 1784. After two unsuccessful contests for the borough of Seaford he obtained the seat upon petition. On 15 Feb. 1787 he spoke at great length against the treaty of commerce with France (Parl. Hist. xxvi. 425–38, 465), and on 4 March 1790 asked for leave to introduce a bill for the reform of parliament, providing for the addition of one hundred new members, to be elected by the resident householders in every county. Fox ‘owned that he thought that the outlines of the present proposition the best of all which he had yet heard suggested,’ but Pitt's motion for an adjournment was carried, and Flood's bill was consequently lost (ib. xxviii. 452–79). At the general election in 1790 Flood was not returned to either parliament. He retired to his seat at Farmley in the county of Kilkenny, where he died on 2 Dec. 1791, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and was buried in the family vault at Burnchurch near Farmley. Flood
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