they have no sort of right either to prevent the labor or to withhold the bread.  Ireland having received no compensation, directly or indirectly, for any restraints on their trade, ought not, in justice or common honesty, to be made subject to such restraints.  I do not mean to impeach the right of the Parliament of Great Britain to make laws for the trade of Ireland:  I only speak of what laws it is right for Parliament to make.

It is nothing to an oppressed people, to say that in part they are protected at our charge.  The military force which shall be kept up in order to cramp the natural faculties of a people, and to prevent their arrival to their utmost prosperity, is the instrument of their servitude, not the means of their protection.  To protect men is to forward, and not to restrain, their improvement.  Else, what is it more than to avow to them, and to the world, that you guard them from others only to make them a prey to yourself?  This fundamental nature of protection does not belong to free, but to all governments, and is as valid in Turkey as in Great Britain.  No government ought to own that it exists for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people, or that there is such a principle involved in its policy.

Under the impression of these sentiments, (and not as wanting every attention to my constituents which affection and gratitude could inspire,) I voted for these bills which give you so much trouble.  I voted for them, not as doing complete justice to Ireland, but as being something less unjust than the general prohibition which has hitherto prevailed.  I hear some discourse as if, in one or two paltry duties on materials, Ireland had a preference, and that those who set themselves against this act of scanty justice assert that they are only contending for an equality.  What equality?  Do they forget that the whole woollen manufacture of Ireland, the most extensive and profitable of any, and the natural staple of that kingdom, has been in a manner so destroyed by restrictive laws of ours, and (at our persuasion, and on our promises) by restrictive laws of their own, that in a few years, it is probable, they will not be able to wear a coat of their own fabric?  Is this equality?  Do gentlemen forget that the understood faith upon which they were persuaded to such an unnatural act has not been kept,—­but a linen-manufacture has been set up, and highly encouraged, against them?  Is this equality?  Do they forget the state of the trade of Ireland in beer, so great an article of consumption, and which now stands in so mischievous a position with regard to their revenue, their manufacture, and their agriculture?  Do they find any equality in all this?  Yet, if the least step is taken towards doing them common justice in the slightest articles for the most limited markets, a cry is raised, as if we were going to be ruined by partiality to Ireland.