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Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 3 of 3 cover

Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 3 of 3

Chapter 8: INDEX
By Henry Hallam
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About This Book

The volume traces constitutional developments from the Restoration through the early Hanoverian era, analyzing how the balance of power between the Crown, Parliament, and the courts was contested and redefined. It examines attempts to extend prerogative, the settlement that limited royal authority, statutes securing liberties, and legal reforms such as habeas corpus and libel law. Chapters explore party politics, patronage, electoral disputes, and institutional changes in both Houses of Parliament that shaped parliamentary government. Separate sections treat Scotland and Ireland, surveying their legal and religious institutions, interactions with central authority, and the constitutional adjustments that accompanied union and settlement.

He had now placed in the vice-royalty of Ireland that star of exceeding brightness, but sinister influence, the willing and able instrument of despotic power, Lord Strafford. In his eyes the country he governed belonged to the Crown by right of conquest; neither the original natives, nor even the descendants of the conquerors themselves, possessing any privileges which could interfere with its sovereignty. He found two parties extremely jealous of each other, yet each loth to recognise an absolute prerogative, and thus in some measure having a common cause. The protestants, not a little from bigotry, but far more from a persuasion that they held their estates on the tenure of a rigid religious monopoly, could not endure to hear of a toleration of popery, which, though originally demanded, was not even mentioned in the king's graces; and disapproved the indulgence shown by those graces to recusants, which is said to have been followed by an impolitic ostentation of the Romish worship.[534] They objected to a renewal of the contribution both as the price of this dangerous tolerance of recusancy, and as debarring the protestant subjects of their constitutional right to grant money only in parliament. Wentworth, however, insisted upon its payment for another year, at the expiration of which a parliament was to be called.[535]

The king did not come without reluctance into this last measure, hating, as he did, the very name of parliament; but the lord deputy confided in his own energy to make it innoxious and serviceable. They conspired together how to extort the most from Ireland, and concede the least; Charles, in truth, showing a most selfish indifference to anything but his own revenue, and a most dishonourable unfaithfulness to his word.[536] The parliament met in 1634, with a strong desire of insisting on the confirmation of the graces they had already paid for; but Wentworth had so balanced the protestant and recusant parties, employed so skilfully the resources of fair promises and intimidation, that he procured six subsidies to be granted before a prorogation, without any mutual concession from the Crown.[537] It had been agreed that a second session should be held for confirming the graces; but in this, as might be expected, the supplies having been provided, the request of both houses that they might receive the stipulated reward met with a cold reception; and ultimately the most essential articles, those establishing a sixty years' prescription against the Crown, and securing the titles of proprietors in Clare and Connaught, as well as those which relieved the catholics in the court of wards from the oath of supremacy, were laid aside. Statutes, on the other hand, were borrowed from England, especially that of uses, which cut off the methods they had hitherto employed for evading the law's severity.[538]

Strafford had always determined to execute the project of the late reign with respect to the western counties. He proceeded to hold an inquisition in each county of Connaught, and summoned juries in order to preserve a mockery of justice in the midst of tyranny. They were required to find the king's title to all the lands, on such evidence as could be found and was thought fit to be laid before them; and were told that what would be best for their own interests would be to return such a verdict as the king desired, what would be best for his, to do the contrary; since he was able to establish it without their consent, and wished only to invest them graciously with a large part of what they now unlawfully withheld from him. These menaces had their effect in all counties except that of Galway, where a jury stood out obstinately against the Crown, and being in consequence, as well as the sheriff, summoned to the castle in Dublin, were sentenced to an enormous fine. Yet the remonstrances of the western proprietors were so clamorous that no steps were immediately taken for carrying into effect the designed plantation; and the great revolutions of Scotland and England which soon ensued gave another occupation to the mind of Lord Strafford.[539] It has never been disputed that a more uniform administration of justice in ordinary cases, a stricter coercion of outrage, a more extensive commerce, evidenced by the augmentation of customs, above all the foundation of the great linen manufacture in Ulster, distinguished the period of his government.[540] But it is equally manifest that neither the reconcilement of parties, nor their affection to the English Crown, could be the result of his arbitrary domination; and that, having healed no wound he found, he left others to break out after his removal. The despotic violence of this minister towards private persons, and those of great eminence, is in some instances well known by the proceedings on his impeachment, and in others is sufficiently familiar by our historical and biographical literature. It is indeed remarkable that we find among the objects of his oppression and insult all that most illustrates the contemporary annals of Ireland, the venerable learning of Usher, the pious integrity of Bedell, the experienced wisdom of Cork, and the early virtue of Clanricarde.

The parliament assembled by Strafford in 1640 began with loud professions of gratitude to the king for the excellent governor he had appointed over them; they voted subsidies to pay a large army raised to serve against the Scots, and seemed eager to give every manifestation of zealous loyalty.[541] But after their prorogation, and during the summer of that year, as rapid a tendency to a great revolution became visible as in England; the Commons, when they met again, seemed no longer the same men; and, after the fall of their great viceroy, they coalesced with his English enemies to consummate his destruction. Hate smothered by fear, but inflamed by the same cause, broke forth in a remonstrance of the Commons, presented through a committee, not to the king, but a superior power, the long parliament of England. The two houses united to avail themselves of the advantageous moment, and to extort, as they very justly might, from the necessities of Charles that confirmation of his promises which had been refused in his prosperity. Both parties, catholic as well as protestant, acted together in this national cause, shunning for the present to bring forward those differences which were not the less implacable for being thus deferred. The catalogue of temporal grievances was long enough to produce this momentary coalition: it might be groundless in some articles, it might be exaggerated in more, it might in many be of ancient standing; but few can pretend to deny that it exhibits a true picture of the misgovernment of Ireland at all times, but especially under the Earl of Strafford. The king, in May 1641, consented to the greater part of their demands; but unfortunately they were never granted by law.[542]

But the disordered condition of his affairs gave encouragement to hopes far beyond what any parliamentary remonstrances could realise; hopes long cherished when they had seemed vain to the world, but such as courage, and bigotry, and resentment would never lay aside. The court of Madrid had not abandoned its connection with the disaffected Irish, especially of the priesthood; the son of Tyrone, and many followers of that cause, served in its armies; and there seems much reason to believe that in the beginning of 1641 the project of insurrection was formed among the expatriated Irish, not without the concurrence of Spain, and perhaps of Richelieu.[543] The government had passed from the vigorous hands of Strafford into those of two lords justices, Sir William Parsons and Sir John Borlase, men by no means equal to the critical circumstances wherein they were placed, though possibly too severely censured by those who do not look at their extraordinary difficulties with sufficient candour. The primary causes of the rebellion are not to be found in their supineness or misconduct, but in the two great sins of the English government; in the penal laws as to religion which pressed on almost the whole people, and in the systematic iniquity which despoiled them of their possessions. They could not be expected to miss such an occasion of revolt; it was an hour of revolution, when liberty was won by arms, and ancient laws were set at nought; the very success of their worst enemies, the covenanters in Scotland, seemed the assurance of their own victory, as it was the reproach of their submission.[544]

Rebellion of 1641.—The rebellion broke out, as is well known, by a sudden massacre of the Scots and English in Ulster, designed no doubt by a vindictive and bigoted people to extirpate those races, and, if contemporary authorities are to be credited, falling little short of this in its execution. Their evident exaggeration has long been acknowledged; but possibly the scepticism of later writers has extenuated rather too much the horrors of this massacre.[545] It was certainly not the crime of the catholics generally; nor, perhaps, in the other provinces of Ireland are they chargeable with more cruelty than their opponents.[546] Whatever may have been the original intentions of the lords of the pale, or of the Anglo-Irish professing the old religion in general (which has been a problem in history), a few months only elapsed before they were almost universally engaged in the war.[547] The old distinctions of Irish and English blood were obliterated by those of religion; and it became a desperate contention whether the majority of the nation should be trodden to the dust by forfeiture and persecution, or the Crown lose everything beyond a nominal sovereignty over Ireland. The insurgents, who might once perhaps have been content with a repeal of the penal laws, grew naturally in their demands through success, or rather through the inability of the English government to keep the field, and began to claim the entire establishment of their religion; terms in themselves not unreasonable, nor apparently disproportionate to their circumstances, and which the king was, in his distresses, nearly ready to concede, but such as never could have been obtained from a third party, of whom they did not sufficiently think, the parliament and people of England. The Commons had, at the very beginning of the rebellion, voted that all the forfeited estates of the insurgents should be allotted to such as should aid in reducing the island to obedience; and thus rendered the war desperate on the part of the Irish.[548]

Subjugation of the Irish by Cromwell.—No great efforts were made, however, for some years; but, after the king's person had fallen into their hands, the victorious party set themselves in earnest to effect the conquest of Ireland. This was achieved by Cromwell and his powerful army after several years, with such bloodshed and rigour that, in the opinion of Lord Clarendon, the sufferings of that nation, from the outset of the rebellion to its close, have never been surpassed but by those of the Jews in their destruction by Titus.

Restoration of Charles II.—At the restoration of Charles II. there were in Ireland two people, one either of native, or old English blood, the other of recent settlement; one catholic, the other protestant; one humbled by defeat, the other insolent with victory; one regarding the soil as his ancient inheritance, the other as his acquisition and reward. There were three religions; for the Scots of Ulster and the army of Cromwell had never owned the episcopal church, which for several years had fallen almost as low as that of Rome. There were claims, not easily set aside on the score of right, to the possession of lands, which the entire island could not satisfy. In England, little more had been necessary than to revive a suspended constitution: in Ireland, it was something beyond a new constitution and code of law that was required; it was the titles and boundaries of each man's private estate that were to be litigated and adjudged. The episcopal church was restored with no delay, as never having been abolished by law; and a parliament, containing no catholics and not many vehement nonconformists, proceeded to the great work of settling the struggles of opposite claimants, by a fresh partition of the kingdom.[549]

Act of Settlement.—The king had already published a declaration for the settlement of Ireland, intended as the basis of an act of parliament. The adventurers, or those who, on the faith of several acts passed in England in 1642, with the assent of the late king, had advanced money for quelling the rebellion, in consideration of lands to be allotted to them in certain stipulated proportions, and who had, in general, actually received them from Cromwell, were confirmed in all the lands possessed by them on the 7th of May 1659; and all the deficiencies were to be supplied before the next year. The army was confirmed in the estates already allotted for their pay, with an exception, of church lands, and some others. Those officers who had served in the royal army against the Irish before 1649 were to be satisfied for their pay, at least to the amount of five-eighths, out of lands to be allotted for that purpose. Innocent papists, that is, such as were not concerned in the rebellion, and whom Cromwell had arbitrarily transplanted into Connaught, were to be restored to their estates, and those who possessed them to be indemnified. Those who had submitted to the peace of 1648, and had not been afterwards in arms, if they had not accepted lands in Connaught, were also to be restored, as soon as those who now possessed them should be satisfied for their expenses. Those who had served the king abroad, and thirty-six enumerated persons of the Irish nobility and gentry, were to be put on the same footing as the last. The precedency of restitution, an important point where the claims exceeded the means of satisfying them, was to be in the order above specified.[550]

This declaration was by no means pleasing to all concerned. The loyal officers, who had served before 1649, murmured that they had little prospect of more than twelve shillings and sixpence in the pound, while the republican army of Cromwell would receive the full value. The Irish were more loud in their complaints; no one was to be held innocent who had been in the rebel quarters before the cessation of 1643; and other qualifications were added so severe that hardly any could expect to come within them. In the House of Commons the majority, consisting very much of the new interests, that is, of the adventurers and army, were in favour of adhering to the declaration. In the House of Lords it was successfully urged that, by gratifying the new men to the utmost, no fund would be left for indemnifying the loyalists, or the innocent Irish. It was proposed that, if the lands not yet disposed of should not be sufficient to satisfy all the interests for which the king had meant to provide by his declaration, there should be a proportional defalcation out of every class for the benefit of the whole. These discussions were adjourned to London, where delegates of the different parties employed every resource of intrigue at the English court. The king's natural bias towards the religion of the Irish had rendered him their friend; and they seemed, at one time, likely to reverse much that had been intended against them; but their agents grew rash with hope, assumed a tone of superiority which ill became their condition, affected to justify their rebellion, and finally so much disgusted their sovereign that he ordered the act of settlement to be sent back with little alteration, except the insertion of some more Irish nominees.[551]

The execution of this act was intrusted to English commissioners, from whom it was reasonable to hope for an impartiality which could not be found among the interested classes. Notwithstanding the rigorous proofs nominally exacted, more of the Irish were pronounced innocent than the Commons had expected; and the new possessors having the sway of that assembly, a clamour was raised that the popish interest had prevailed; some talked of defending their estates by arms, some even meddled in fanatical conspiracies against the government; it was insisted that a closer inquisition should be made, and stricter qualifications demanded. The manifest deficiency of lands to supply all the claimants for whom the act of settlement provided, made it necessary to resort to a supplemental measure, called the act of explanation. The adventurers and soldiers relinquished one-third of the estates enjoyed by them on the 7th of May 1659. Twenty Irish nominees were added to those who were to be restored by the king's favour; but all those who had not already been adjudged innocent, more than three thousand in number, were absolutely cut off from any hope of restitution. The great majority of these no question were guilty; yet they justly complained of this confiscation without trial.[552] Upon the whole result, the Irish catholics having previously held about two-thirds of the kingdom, lost more than one-half of their possessions by forfeiture on account of their rebellion. If we can rely at all on the calculations, made almost in the infancy of political arithmetic by one of its most diligent investigators, they were diminished also by much more than one-third through the calamities of that period.[553]

It is more easy to censure the particular inequalities, or even, in some respects, injustice of the act of settlement, than to point out what better course was to have been adopted. The readjustment of all private rights after so entire a destruction of their landmarks could only be effected by the coarse process of general rules. Nor does it appear that the catholics, considered as a great mass, could reasonably murmur against the confiscation of half their estates, after a civil war wherein it is evident that so large a proportion of themselves were concerned.[554] Charles, it is true, had not been personally resisted by the insurgents; but, as chief of England, he stood in the place of Cromwell, and equally represented the sovereignty of the greater island over the lesser, which under no form of government it would concede.

The catholics, however, thought themselves oppressed by the act of settlement; and could not forgive the Duke of Ormond for his constant regard to the protestant interests, and the supremacy of the English Crown. They had enough to encourage them in the king's bias towards their religion, which he was able to manifest more openly than in England. Under the administration of Lord Berkely in 1670, at the time of Charles's conspiracy with the King of France to subvert religion and liberty, they began to menace an approaching change, and to aim at revoking, or materially weakening, the act of settlement. The most bigoted and insolent of the popish clergy, who had lately rejected with indignation an offer of more reasonable men to renounce the tenets obnoxious to civil governments, were countenanced at Dublin; but the first alarm of the new proprietors, as well as the general apprehension of the court's designs in England, soon rendered it necessary to desist from the projected innovations.[555] The next reign, of course, reanimated the Irish party; a dispensing prerogative set aside all the statutes; every civil office, the courts of justice, and the privy council, were filled with catholics; the protestant soldiers were disbanded; the citizens of that religion were disarmed; the tithes were withheld from their clergy; they were suddenly reduced to feel that bitter condition of a conquered and proscribed people, which they had long rendered the lot of their enemies.[556] From these enemies, exasperated by bigotry and revenge, they could have nothing but a full and exceeding measure of retaliation to expect; nor had they even the last hope that an English king, for the sake of his Crown and country, must protect those who formed the strongest link between the two islands. A man violent and ambitious, without superior capacity, the Earl of Tyrconnel, lord lieutenant in 1687, and commander of the army, looked only to his master's interests, in subordination to those of his countrymen, and of his own. It is now ascertained that, doubtful of the king's success in the struggle for restoring popery in England, he had made secret overtures to some of the French agents for casting off all connection with that kingdom, in case of James's death, and, with the aid of Louis, placing the crown of Ireland on his own head.[557]

War of 1689, and final reduction of Ireland.—The revolution in England was followed by a war in Ireland of three years' duration, and a war on both sides, like that of 1641, for self-preservation. In the parliament held by James at Dublin in 1690, the act of settlement was repealed, and above 2000 persons attainted by name; both, it has been said, perhaps with little truth, against the king's will, who dreaded the impetuous nationality that was tearing away the bulwarks of his throne.[558] But the magnanimous defence of Derry and the splendid victory of the Boyne restored the protestant cause; though the Irish, with the succour of French troops, maintained for two years a gallant resistance, they could not ultimately withstand the triple superiority of military talents, resources, and discipline. Their bravery, however, served to obtain the articles of Limerick on the surrender of that city; conceded by their noble-minded conqueror, against the disposition of those who longed to plunder and persecute their fallen enemy. By the first of these articles, "the Roman catholics of this kingdom shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of King Charles II.; and their majesties, as soon as their affairs will permit them to summon a parliament in this kingdom, will endeavour to procure the said Roman catholics such further security in that particular as may preserve them from any disturbance upon the account of their said religion." The second secures to the inhabitants of Limerick and other places then in possession of the Irish, and to all officers and soldiers then in arms, who should return to their majesties' obedience, and to all such as should be under their protection in the counties of Limerick, Kerry, Clare, Galway, and Mayo, all their estates, and all their rights, privileges, and immunities, which they held in the reign of Charles II., free from all forfeitures or outlawries incurred by them.[559]

This second article, but only as to the garrison of Limerick or other persons in arms, is confirmed by statute some years afterwards.[560] The first article seems, however, to be passed over. The forfeitures on account of the rebellion, estimated at 1,060,792 acres, were somewhat diminished by restitutions to the ancient possessors under the capitulation; the greater part were lavishly distributed to English grantees.[561] It appears from hence, that at the end of the seventeenth century, the Irish or Anglo-Irish catholics could hardly possess above one-sixth or one-seventh of the kingdom. They were still formidable from their numbers and their sufferings; and the victorious party saw no security but in a system of oppression, contained in a series of laws during the reigns of William and Anne, which have scarce a parallel in European history, unless it be that of the protestants in France, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, who yet were but a feeble minority of the whole people. No papist was allowed to keep a school, or to teach in any private houses, except the children of the family.[562] Severe penalties were denounced against such as should go themselves or send others for education beyond seas in the Romish religion; and, on probable information given to a magistrate, the burthen of proving the contrary was thrown on the accused; the offence not to be tried by a jury, but by justices at quarter sessions.[563] Intermarriages between persons of different religion, and possessing any estate in Ireland, were forbidden; the children, in case of either parent being protestant, might be taken from the other, to be educated in that faith.[564] No papist could be guardian to any child; but the court of chancery might appoint some relation or other person to bring up the ward in the protestant religion.[565] The eldest son, being a protestant, might turn his father's estate in fee simple into a tenancy for life, and thus secure his own inheritance. But if the children were all papists, the father's lands were to be of the nature of gavel-kind, and descend equally among them. Papists were disabled from purchasing lands, except for terms of not more than thirty-one years, at a rent not less than two-thirds of the full value. They were even to conform within six months after any title should accrue by descent, devise, or settlement, on pain of forfeiture to the next protestant heir; a provision which seems intended to exclude them from real property altogether, and to render the others almost supererogatory.[566] Arms, says the poet, remain to the plundered; but the Irish legislature knew that the plunder would be imperfect and insecure while arms remained; no papist was permitted to retain them, and search might be made at any time by two justices.[567] The bare celebration of catholic rites was not subjected to any fresh penalties; but regular priests, bishops, and others claiming jurisdiction, and all who should come into the kingdom from foreign parts, were banished on pain of transportation, in case of neglecting to comply, and of high treason in case of returning from banishment. Lest these provisions should be evaded, priests were required to be registered; they were forbidden to leave their own parishes; and rewards were held out to informers who should detect the violations of these statutes, to be levied on the popish inhabitants of the country.[568] To have exterminated the catholics by the sword, or expelled them, like the Moriscoes of Spain, would have been little more repugnant to justice and humanity, but incomparably more politic.

Dependence of the Irish upon the English parliament.—It may easily be supposed, that no political privileges would be left to those who were thus debarred of the common rights of civil society. The Irish parliament had never adopted the act passed in the 5th of Elizabeth, imposing the oath of supremacy on the members of the Commons. It had been full of catholics under the queen and her two next successors. In the second session of 1641, after the flames of rebellion had enveloped almost all the island, the House of Commons were induced to exclude, by a resolution of their own, those who would not take that oath; a step which can only be judged in connection with the general circumstances of Ireland at that awful crisis.[569] In the parliament of 1661, no catholic, or only one, was returned;[570] but the house addressed the lords justices to issue a commission for administering the oath of supremacy to all its members. A bill passed the Commons in 1663, for imposing that oath in future, which was stopped by a prorogation; and the Duke of Ormond seems to have been adverse to it.[571] An act of the English parliament after the revolution, reciting that "great disquiet and many dangerous attempts have been made to deprive their majesties and their royal predecessors of the said realm of Ireland by the liberty which the popish recusants there have had and taken to sit and vote in parliament," requires every member of both houses of parliament to take the new oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and to subscribe the declaration against transubstantiation before taking his seat.[572] This statute was adopted and enacted by the Irish parliament in 1782, after they had renounced the legislative supremacy of England under which it had been enforced. The elective franchise, which had been rather singularly spared in an act of Anne, was taken away from the Roman catholics of Ireland in 1715; or, as some think, not absolutely till 1727.[573]

These tremendous statutes had in some measure the effect which their framers designed. The wealthier families, against whom they were principally levelled, conformed in many instances to the protestant church.[574] The catholics were extinguished as a political body; and, though any willing allegiance to the house of Hanover would have been monstrous, and it is known that their bishops were constantly nominated to the pope by the Stuart princes,[575] they did not manifest at any period, or even during the rebellions of 1715 and 1745, the least movement towards a disturbance of the government. Yet for thirty years after the accession of George I. they continued to be insulted in public proceedings under the name of the common enemy, sometimes oppressed by the enactment of new statutes, or the stricter execution of the old; till in the latter years of George II. their peaceable deportment, and the rise of a more generous spirit among the Irish protestants, not only sheathed the fangs of the law, but elicited expressions of esteem from the ruling powers, which they might justly consider as the pledge of a more tolerant policy. The mere exercise of their religion in an obscure manner had long been permitted without molestation.[576]

Thus in Ireland there were three nations, the original natives, the Anglo-Irish, and the new English; the two former catholic, except some chiefly of the upper classes, who had conformed to the church; the last wholly protestant. There were three religions, the Roman catholic, the established or Anglican, and the presbyterian; more than one-half of the protestants, according to the computation of those times, belonging to the latter denomination.[577] These however in a less degree were under the ban of the law as truly as the catholics themselves; they were excluded from all civil and military offices by a test act, and even their religious meetings were denounced by penal statutes. Yet the House of Commons after the revolution always contained a strong presbyterian body, and unable, as it seems, to obtain an act of indemnity for those who had taken commissions in the militia, while the rebellion of 1715 was raging in Great Britain, had recourse to a resolution, that whoever should prosecute any dissenter for accepting such a commission is an enemy to the king and the protestant interest.[578] They did not even obtain a legal toleration till 1720.[579] It seems as if the connection of the two islands, and the whole system of constitutional laws in the lesser, subsisted only for the sake of securing the privileges and emoluments of a small number of ecclesiastics, frequently strangers, who rendered very little return for their enormous monopoly. A great share, in fact, of the temporal government under George II. was thrown successively into the hands of two primates, Boulter and Stone; the one a worthy but narrow-minded man, who showed his egregious ignorance of policy in endeavouring to promote the wealth and happiness of the people, whom he at the same time studied to depress and discourage in respect of political freedom; the other an able, but profligate and ambitious statesman, whose name is mingled, as an object of odium and enmity, with the first great struggles of Irish patriotism.

The new Irish nation, or rather the protestant nation, since all distinctions of origin have, from the time of the great rebellion, been merged in those of religion, partook in large measure of the spirit that was poured out on the advocates of liberty and the revolution in the sister kingdom. Their parliament was always strongly whig, and scarcely manageable during the later years of the queen. They began to assimilate themselves more and more to the English model, and to cast off by degrees the fetters that galled and degraded them. By Poyning's celebrated law, the initiative power was reserved to the English council. This act, at one time popular in Ireland, was afterwards justly regarded as destructive of the rights of their parliament, and a badge of the nation's dependence. It was attempted by the Commons in 1641, and by the catholic confederates in the rebellion, to procure its repeal; which Charles I. steadily refused, till he was driven to refuse nothing. In his son's reign, it is said that "the council framed bills altogether; a negative alone on them and their several provisoes was left to parliament; only a general proposition for a bill by way of address to the lord lieutenant and council came from parliament; nor was it till after the revolution that heads of bills were presented; these last in fact resembled acts of parliament or bills, with only the small difference of 'We pray that it may be enacted,' instead of 'Be it enacted.'"[580] They assumed about the same time the examination of accounts, and of the expenditure of public money.[581]

Meanwhile, as they gradually emancipated themselves from the ascendancy of the Crown, they found a more formidable power to contend with in the English parliament. It was acknowledged, by all at least of the protestant name, that the Crown of Ireland was essentially dependent on that of England, and subject to any changes that might affect the succession of the latter. But the question as to the subordination of her legislature was of a different kind. The precedents and authorities of early ages seem not decisive; so far as they extend, they rather countenance the opinion that English statutes were of themselves valid in Ireland. But from the time of Henry VI. or Edward IV. it was certainly established that they had no operation, unless enacted by the Irish parliament. This however would not legally prove that they might not be binding, if express words to that effect were employed; and such was the doctrine of Lord Coke and of other English lawyers. This came into discussion about the eventful period of 1641. The Irish in general protested against the legislative authority of England, as a novel theory which could not be maintained;[582] and two treatises on the subject, one ascribed to Lord Chancellor Bolton, or more probably to an eminent lawyer, Patrick Darcy, for the independence of Ireland, another, in answer to it, by Serjeant Mayart, may be read in the Hibernica of Harris.[583] Very few instances occurred before the revolution, wherein the English parliament thought fit to include Ireland in its enactments, and none perhaps wherein they were carried into effect. But after the revolution several laws of great importance were passed in England to bind the other kingdom, and acquiesced in without express opposition by its parliament. Molyneux, however, in his celebrated Case of Ireland's being bound by Acts of Parliament in England stated, published in 1697, set up the claim of his country for absolute legislative independency. The House of Commons at Westminster came to resolutions against this book; and, with their high notions of parliamentary sovereignty, were not likely to desist from a pretension which, like the very similar claim to impose taxes in America, sprung in fact from the semi-republican scheme of constitutional law established by means of the revolution.[584] It is evident that while the sovereignty and enacting power was supposed to reside wholly in the king, and only the power of consent to the two houses of parliament, it was much less natural to suppose a control of the English legislature over other dominions of the Crown, having their own representation for similar purposes, than after they had become, in effect and in general sentiment, though not quite in the statute-book, co-ordinate partakers of the supreme authority. The Irish parliament, however, advancing as it were in a parallel line, had naturally imbibed the same sense of its own supremacy, and made at length an effort to assert it. A judgment from the court of exchequer in 1719 having been reversed by the House of Lords, an appeal was brought before the Lords in England, who affirmed the judgment of the exchequer. The Irish Lords resolved that no appeal lay from the court of exchequer in Ireland to the king in parliament in Great Britain; and the barons of that court having acted in obedience to the order of the English Lords, were taken into the custody of the black rod. That house next addressed the king, setting forth their reasons against admitting the appellant jurisdiction. But the Lords in England, after requesting the king to confer some favour on the barons of the exchequer who had been censured and illegally imprisoned for doing their duty, ordered a bill to be brought in for better securing the dependency of Ireland upon the Crown of Great Britain, which declares "that the king's majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal and Commons of Great Britain, in parliament assembled, had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the people and the kingdom of Ireland; and that the House of Lords of Ireland have not, nor of right ought to have, any jurisdiction to judge of, reverse, or affirm any judgment, sentence, or decree given or made in any court within the said kingdom; and that all proceedings before the said House of Lords upon any such judgment, sentence, or decree, are, and are hereby declared to be, utterly null and void, to all intents and purposes whatsoever."[585]

The English government found no better method of counteracting this rising spirit of independence than by bestowing the chief posts in the state and church on strangers, in order to keep up what was called the English interest.[586] This wretched policy united the natives of Ireland in jealousy and discontent, which the latter years of Swift were devoted to inflame. It was impossible that the kingdom should become, as it did under George II., more flourishing through its great natural fertility, its extensive manufacture of linen, and its facilities for commerce, though much restricted (the domestic alarm from the papists also being allayed by their utter prostration), without writhing under the indignity of its subordination; or that a House of Commons, constructed so much on the model of the English, could hear patiently of liberties and privileges it did not enjoy. These aspirations for equality first, perhaps, broke out into audible complaints in the year 1753. The country was in so thriving a state that there was a surplus revenue after payment of all charges. The House of Commons determined to apply this to the liquidation of a debt. The government, though not unwilling to admit of such an application, maintained that the whole revenue belonged to the king, and could not be disposed of without his previous consent. In England, where the grants of parliament are appropriated according to estimates, such a question could hardly arise; nor would there, I presume, be the slightest doubt as to the control of the House of Commons over a surplus income. But in Ireland, the practice of appropriation seems never to have prevailed, at least so strictly;[587] and the constitutional right might perhaps not unreasonably be disputed. After long and violent discussions, wherein the speaker of the Commons and other eminent men bore a leading part on the popular side, the Crown was so far victorious as to procure some motions to be carried, which seemed to imply its authority; but the house took care, by more special applications of the revenue, to prevent the recurrence of an undisposed surplus.[588] From this era the great parliamentary history of Ireland begins, and is terminated after half a century by the union: a period fruitful of splendid eloquence, and of ardent, though not always uncompromising, patriotism; but which, of course, is beyond the limits prescribed to these pages.

INDEX