merchants, who could not see, without the most narrow-minded apprehension, the monopoly of the trade with India and the West Indies, which they had hitherto enjoyed, threatened by the admission of Ireland to its benefits.  And now a clause in the second bill, binding the Irish Parliament to reenact the Navigation Laws existing in England, called up an opposition from Grattan[132] as furious as that with which Mr. Brownlow had denounced the original measure.  To demand the enactment of the English Navigation Law, he declared, was “a revocation of the constitution;” and his rival, Flood, in his zeal to emulate his popularity with the mob, surpassing him in vehemence, inveighed against the clause, as one intended to make the Irish Parliament a mere register of the English Parliament, “which it should never become”.  All the arguments brought forward in favor of the measure by the supporters of the government—­arguments which, probably, no one would now be found to deny to have been unanswerable—­failed to make the slightest impression on a House in which the chief object of each opponent of the ministry seemed to be to outrun his fellows in violence; and eventually the measure fell to the ground, and for fifteen years more Ireland was deprived of the advantages which had been intended for her.

And even yet the danger from the Volunteers was not wholly extinguished.  Though their Convention had been suppressed, its leaders had only changed their tactics.  Under the guidance of a Dublin ironmonger, named Napper Tandy, they now proposed to convene a Congress, to consist, not, as before, of delegates from the Volunteer body, but of persons who should be representatives of the entire nation; and Tandy had even the audacity to issue circulars to the sheriffs of the different counties, to require them, in their official capacity, to summon the people to return representatives to this Congress.  The Sheriff of Dublin, a man of the name of O’Reilly, obeyed the requisition; but Fitzgibbon, who, luckily, was now Attorney-general, instantly prosecuted him for abuse of his office.  He was convicted, fined, and imprisoned, and his punishment deterred others from following his example.  And a rigorous example had become indispensable, since it was known to the government that Tandy and some of his followers were acting in connection with French emissaries, and that their object was the separation of Ireland from England, and, in the minds of some of them, certainly the annexation of the country to France; indeed, on one occasion Fitzgibbon asserted in the House of Commons that he had seen resolutions inviting the French into the country.  The government would gladly have established a militia to supersede the Volunteers, but the temper of the Irish Parliament, in its newly-acquired independence, rendered any such attempt hopeless; and Mr. Grattan, with a perversity of judgment which his warmest admirers must find it difficult to reconcile with statesmanship,