GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT
"To destroy is easy: the edifices of the mind, like the fabrics of marble, require an age to build, but ask only minutes to precipitate: and as the fall of both is an effort of no time, so neither is it a business of any strength. A pick-axe and a common labourer will do the one—a little lawyer, a little pimp, a wicked Minister the other."
Grattan (1800.)
"Yet I do not give up my country. I see her in a swoon, but she is not dead—though in her tomb she lies helpless and motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her cheeks a glow of beauty—
'Thou art not conquered: Beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson on thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.'"
Grattan
(In the final debate on the Act of Union,
May 26th, 1800).