vorite attribute of Heaven,

"'Is twice blessed--
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.'"

It might, he said, be regarded as "a treaty with Ireland by which that
country would be put on a fair, equal, and impartial footing with Great
Britain, in point of commerce, with respect to foreign countries and our
colonies." The community of burdens which his measure would impose on
Ireland was this: that whenever the gross hereditary revenue of Ireland
should exceed L650,000 (an amount considerably in excess of anything it
had ever yet reached), the excess should be applied to the support of
the fleet of the United Kingdom. It was, in fact, a burden that could
have no existence at all until the Irish trade had become far more
flourishing and productive than as yet it had ever been. Yet a measure
conceived in such a spirit of liberality, and framed with such careful
attention to the minutest interests of Irish trade, Mr. Brownlow did not
hesitate to denounce as one "tending to make Ireland a tributary nation
to Great Britain. The same terms," he declared, "had been held out to
America, and Ireland had equal spirit with America to reject them." He
even declared that "it was happy for Mr. Orde" (the Chief Secretary, who
had introduced the measure into the Irish House of Commons) "that he was
in a country remarkable for humanity. Had he proposed such a measure in
a Polish Diet, he would not have lived to carry back an answer to his
master. If," he concluded, "the gifts of Britain are to be accompanied
with the slavery of Ireland, I will never be a slave to pay tribute; I
will hurl back her gifts with scorn." Baffled by such frantic and
senseless opposition, Pitt condescended to remodel his measure. In its
new form it was not so greatly for the advantage of Ireland. He had been
constrained to admit some limitation of his original liberality by the
opposition which, it had met with in England also where Fox, at all
times an avowed enemy of freedom of trade, had made himself the
mouth-piece of the London and Liverpool 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 whic