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The speeches of the Right Honourable Henry Grattan
The speeches of the Right Honourable Henry Grattan Author:Henry Grattan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: brought the bill forward at the request of the Board of First Fruits in Ireland, a board composed of the Lord Chancellor, the three chief Judges of the other cou... more »rts, and many of the most respectable gentlemen of Ireland. He should be glad to hear what objections could exist to the bill now before the House. Mr. Grattan answered, that his first objection was, that a bill of this nature, in which not only the church but the state in Ireland might be eventually involved, should pass in the absence of those gentlemen who represent Ireland, and who must feel a material interest in the ecclesiastical establishment of that country, and who could not possibly attend in their places in that house until after the assizes. If it was desired that he should offer any further reasons, he must be obliged, very reluctantly, to trespass on the time of the House at greater length; but the House would have to impute that to the curiosity of the learned doctor, and not to any wish of his. His first additional objection then was, that the bill had not yet been debated, and this he conceived a strong objection. Secondly, the statement of the learned doctor, that this bill was exactly, word for word, the same with the act which had passed some sessions ago, for enforcing the residence of the English clergy; whereas the circumstances of both countries differed so materially from each other, that the measure, which might be extremely right in the one, would be very -wrong in the other. To use a very homely simile, it would l)e like the case of a tailor,- who, having made a garment exactly fitting one man, should propose it to be worn by another whom it fitted in no respect; and really the proposition of the learned doctor to impose regulations on the clergy of Ireland, which were locally and circumstan...« less