"What is your plan? There are but two measures in the country, reform or force. We have offered you the former; you seem inclined to the latter. Let us consider it: "To subdue, to coerce, to establish unqualified submission;" an arduous, a precarious undertaking! Have you well weighed all its consequences? Is there not much of passion in your judgment? Have you not lost your temper a little in the contest? I am sure you have shown this night symptoms of irritation—a certain impatience of the complaints of the people. So it was in the American business. Nothing less in that contest than their unconditional submission. Alas! what was the consequence? As far as you have tried your experiment here, it has failed; the report shows you it has failed. It has increased the evil it would restrain; it has propagated the principle it would punish; but if repeated and invigorated you think it will have more success; I apprehend not. Do not you perceive, that instead of strengthening monarchy by constitutional principles, you are attempting to give it force by despotic ones? That you are giving the new principle the advantage of success abroad and of suffering at home, and that you are losing the people, while you think you are strengthening the throne; that you have made a false alliance with unnatural principles, and instead of identifying with the people, you identify with abuses?"
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Members of the Parliament of the United KingdomPoliticians from IrelandPeople from DublinAnglicansWhig (British political party) politicians
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Henry Grattan
Henry Grattan (3 July 1746 – 4 June 1820) was an Irish politician and lawyer who campaigned for legislative freedom for the Irish Parliament in the late 18th century from Britain. He was a Member of the Irish Parliament (MP) from 1775 to 1801 and a Member of Parliament (MP) in Westminster from 1805 to 1820. He has been described as a superb orator and a romantic. With generous enthusiasm he demanded that Ireland should be granted its rightful status, that of an independent nation, though he alwa
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