peach the negotiator. Or are we to have two foreign offices, one in
Downing Street and one in Dublin Castle? Is His Majesty to send to every
court in Christendom two diplomatic agents, to thwart each other, and
to be spies upon each other? It is inconceivable but that, in a very
few years, disputes such as can be terminated only by arms must arise
between communities so absurdly united and so absurdly disunited. All
history confirms this reasoning. Superficial observers have fancied that
they had found cases on the other side. But as soon as you examine those
cases you will see either that they bear no analogy to the case with
which we have to deal, or that they corroborate my argument. The case
of Ireland herself has been cited. Ireland, it has been said, had an
independent legislature from 1782 to 1800: during eighteen years there
were two coequal parliaments under one Crown; and yet there was no
collision. Sir, the reason that there was not perpetual collision was,
as we all know, that the Irish parliament, though nominally independent,
was generally kept in real dependence by means of the foulest corruption
that ever existed in any assembly. But it is not true that there was no
collision. Before the Irish legislature had been six years independent,
a collision did take place, a collision such as might well have produced
a civil war. In the year 1788, George the Third was incapacitated
by illness from discharging his regal functions. According to the
constitution, the duty of making provision for the discharge of those
functions devolved on the parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland.
Between the government of Great Britain and the government of Ireland
there was, during the interregnum, no connection whatever. The sovereign
who was the common head of both governments had virtually ceased to
exist: and the two legislatures were no more to each other than
this House and the Chamber of Deputies at Paris. What followed? The
Parliament of Great Britain resolved to offer the Regency to the Prince
of Wales under many important restrictions. The Parliament of Ireland
made him an offer of the Regency without any restrictions whatever. By
the same right by which the Irish Lords and Commons made that offer,
they might, if Mr Pitt's doctrine be the constitutional doctrine, as
I believe it to be, have made the Duke of York or the Duke of Leinster
Regent. To this Regent they might have given all the prerogatives of the
King. Suppo