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GRATTAN. 2O3 were crowded, and expectation was raised to enthusiasm. The resolutions then moved by Mr. Grattan were objected to at the Castle, not so much for their substance (for the British ministry meant fairly) as because they were thought to require some modifications, which, in the opinion of Mr. Grattan and his friends, would have dimi nished their weight and efficacy. Perhaps the Duke of Portland might think they would not meet the concur rence of the British cabinet without some alteration. The good Lord Charlemont had several interviews with his grace on the subject, in the course of which he declared his intention, and that of his friends, to move the resolu tions again in both Houses, without any alteration; and that ministers might take what course they thought fit. In this state of uncertainty, when the House met, it was wholly unknown to Lord Charlemont and his friends, whether the resolutions and address which Mr. Grattan had undertaken to move, would be opposed by government or not. Mr. Grattan, however, persevered; and, though much indisposed, prefaced his declaration of rights by a most splendid oration, in which he observed, “he was not very old, and yet he remembered Ireland a child. He had watched her growth ; from infancy she grew to arms, from arins to liberty. She was not now afraid of the French, she was not now afraid of the English, she was not now afraid of herself; her sons were no longer an arbitrary gentry; a ruined commonalty; protestants op pressing catholics; catholics groaning under oppression : but she was now an united land.” He stated the three great causes of complaint on the part of Ireland;—the declaratory statute of George the First, enabling the Bri tish parliament to make laws to bind Ireland;—the perpe tual mutiny bill, which rendered the standing army of Ireland independent of the control of parliament;-and the unconstitutional powers of the Irish privy council to mutilate or suppress bills of the Irish parliament on their way to England for the royal assent. The repeal of these obnoxious statutes, and the abolition of that most im