In that public storm, too, I had my private feelings.  I had seen blown down and prostrate on the ground several of those houses to whom I was chiefly indebted for the honor this city has done me.  I confess, that, whilst the wounds of those I loved were yet green, I could not bear to show myself in pride and triumph in that place into which their partiality had brought me, and to appear at feasts and rejoicings in the midst of the grief and calamity of my warm friends, my zealous supporters, my generous benefactors.  This is a true, unvarnished, undisguised state of the affair.  You will judge of it.

This is the only one of the charges in which I am personally concerned.  As to the other matters objected against me, which in their turn I shall mention to you, remember once more I do not mean to extenuate or excuse.  Why should I, when the things charged are among those upon which I found all my reputation?  What would be left to me, if I myself was the man who softened and blended and diluted and weakened all the distinguishing colors of my life, so as to leave nothing distinct and determinate in my whole conduct?

It has been said, and it is the second charge, that in the questions of the Irish trade I did not consult the interest of my constituents,—­or, to speak out strongly, that I rather acted as a native of Ireland than as an English member of Parliament.

I certainly have very warm good wishes for the place of my birth.  But the sphere of my duties is my true country.  It was as a man attached to your interests, and zealous for the conservation of your power and dignity, that I acted on that occasion, and on all occasions.  You were involved in the American war.  A new world of policy was opened, to which it was necessary we should conform, whether we would or not; and my only thought was how to conform to our situation in such a manner as to unite to this kingdom, in prosperity and in affection, whatever remained of the empire.  I was true to my old, standing, invariable principle, that all things which came from Great Britain should issue as a gift of her bounty and beneficence, rather than as claims recovered against a struggling litigant,—­or at least, that, if your beneficence obtained no credit in your concessions, yet that they should appear the salutary provisions of your wisdom and foresight, not as things wrung from you with your blood by the cruel gripe of a rigid necessity.  The first concessions, by being (much against my will) mangled and stripped of the parts which were necessary to make out their just correspondence and connection in trade, were of no use.  The next year a feeble attempt was made to bring the thing into better shape.  This attempt, (countenanced by the minister,) on the very first appearance of some popular uneasiness, was, after a considerable progress through the House, thrown out by him.