Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/243

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GRATTAN. 239 ing itself to great objects, such as the pension list, police establishment, or sinecure offices, fell upon a few miserable military taylors; and, by depriving them of their little fire, in reality increased, instead of diminishing, the expense of clothing the army. He might have dwelt on a proro gation of parliament, prejudicial to the public business, and unnecessary, except for the purposes of a faction.” Mr. Grattan wished “that the lord-lieutenant had not been introduced into the address: he said, the expenses of the Marquis of Buckingham were accompanied with the most extraordinary professions of economy, and cen sures on the conduct of the administration that imme diately preceded him: he had exclaimed against the pensions of the Duke of Rutland; a man accessible un doubtedly to applications, but the most disinterested man on earth, and one whose noble nature demanded some, but received no indulgence from the rigid principles or professions of the Marquis of Buckingham. He exclaimed against his pensions, and he confirmed them: he resisted motions made to disallow some of them, and he finally agreed" to a pension for Mr. Orde, the secretary of the Duke of Portland's administration, whose extravagance was at once the object of his invective, and of his boun ty: he resisted his pension, if report says true; and having shewn that it was against his conscience, he sub mitted. Mr. Orde can never forgive the Marquis the charges made against the man he thought proper to re ward: the public will never forgive the pension given to a man the Marquis thought proper to condemn. The pension list, whose increase the Marquis condemned, he had an opportunity to restrain. A bill limiting the amount of pensions was proposed by an honourable friend of his, and was resisted by the Marquis of Bucking ham; his secretary was the person to oppose that bill, and to give a signal to the servants of the crown to resist i t . He assigned his reason, viz. because h e thought his excellency was entitled t o the same confidence which had been reposed i n the other viceroys, that i s , the confidence