h 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,