TO THE LOYAL INHABITANTS OF DUBLIN. Friends, and Fellow Citizens, IF there be any thing that can conciliate attention, or create confidence in the appellations with which I accoft you, by that I adjure you, to give this addrefs a patient hearing. I have the fame intereft with you in the fubject of which it treats. Do not conclude that, because I may fee it in a different light from that in which the generality of you feem to have confidered it, I must be your enemy. If I am your enemy, I must be my own enemy, the enemy of all that ought to be dear to me. I may, perhaps, be wrong in my opinions; but I can do you no injury, by defiring you to hear what I have to urge in their favour. favour. If I cannot induce you to think with me, you will only be where you are. I own I cannot fee the wisdom or the prudence in listening only to one fide of the question. In what tranfaction of trade, or bufinefs, would any of you think himself juftifiable, if he refused to listen to a matter proposed to him for his advantage, with an attention equal to its importance, and to weigh well what might be urged for it as well as against it? Would it be right in him to confider it through no other medium than that of prejudice and violence, and paffion? Or to run the risk of facrificing his own best interests to the partial and selfish views of men having a different intereft from his in the event? On the advantages, or disadvantages, of an Union with England, the great bulk of you must take the opinions of others. The complicated interests that are involved in all fuch great political questions, require a very different line of application to that which you purfue. The wifdom of our conftitution has provided, that all fuch questions should be difcuffed and settled by your two Houses of Parliament, advifing the king's government. One of thefe Houses, is the creature and the organ of that defcription of the community, in which you are claffed; it is peculiarly employed in watching over your interefts, and providing for what will beft promote and fecure them. But, in the prefent queftion of an Union, the perfons who, in the fuccefs of the meafure, forefaw the deftruction of a fyftem which, for centuries, has facrificed the peace and profperity of the great body of the people of Ireland, to the power and aggrandizement of individuals, would not truft their their caufe to the great deliberative counfel, that thus represents you, when called upon by the father of his people, to remove this inveterate abuse, and to provide for the general happiness, without any regard to the ufurpations of any peculiar defcription or class of men. They knew they could have no chance, if the matter was left to reafon and argument, and plain sense: And, as it happened, unfortunately, that, from local circumstances, there was more room for mifrepresentation in the effects which a Union might have on your city, than on any other part of the kingdom, they directed all their arts and intrigues against you. They laboured to feparate you from your Parliament; they drove you to take this great question into your own hands, and to decide on it from the impulfe of paffions, which they had themselves excited. To accomplish the triumph of paffion over reafon, and of rashness and precipitancy over caution and deliberation, a few factious words thrown in, as oil to a flame, are sufficient to produce an effect which it requires a long train of facts, and a lengthened chain of reafon, to counteract and do away. Hence, "That Dublin muft be ruined by the Union; its "manufacturers deprived of bread, and its fhop 66 keepers beggared"-Hence," that grafs fhould "grow in Sackville-ftreet; and that we fhould fhoot "fnipes in College-green," has excited an univerfal frenzy from Kilmainham to the Pigeon-house; and every oyster-woman in the street cries out, that her trade will be ruined, and that Dublin is to be a defart. This dreadful calamity is to be the unavoidable ef-, fect of the removal of our Parliament-fo it is boldly afferted; afferted; but, to give this affertion any weight, your agitators ought to prove to you, that the present state of your capital in buildings, in population, and in wealth, has been entirely owing to its being the feat of Parliament. If they can prove this, the question, no doubt, would be foon decided in their favour. But, if no propofition can be more false, or contrary to fact, then all the clamour they have raifed on that pretext, has been the effect of grofs mifrepresentation, and an unpardonable abuse of the confidence you have placed in them. I will now lay a ground for you to judge of this matter. From a furvey made by order of Government in 1753, the increase of inhabitants in your city fince 1711, was stated at 32,000. It was immediately after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, that the great increafe began. No lefs thon 1200 houses were that year on the Stocks at once. After the Peace of Paris in 1763, the encrease was still greater. All this is within living memory. During the whole of these periods, and until 1782, the Parliament affembled only once in two years. They affembled even then only for a very fhort feffion. Every fecond winter the Members of either House were under no neceffity of reforting to the capital in their character of Legiflators. They never did refort to it in that character. Dublin, therefore, did not owe its flourishing state to the mere circumftance of having the feat of Parliament within its walls, and to account for it, you must look to fome other causes. Now, I take it, that what these caufes are, it requires no great depth of obfervation to trace. I fhall clafs |