or to such other as, by sufferance of your Grace and your progenitors the people of this realm have taken at their free liberty by their own consent". What now becomes of precedent? there is the declaration of right, their counter-claim by the House of Commons in Ireland,. declaring that His Majesty's subjects in Ireland are a free people, and to be governed only according to the common law of England, and statutes made and established by Parliament in this kingdom of Ireland, and according to the lawful customs used in the same: there is the protest of the lords of Ireland in 1721, with five instruments of counter-claim-and these, protestations from a people unable to resist.

The few instances of ancient acts naming Ireland, do not amount to a usage, and therefore I submit that England has not made out her title by nature or by contract; she has made out no title; she has not put Ireland upon her case: and we might here stop, but we choose to go on, and we observe, that three of the instruments we have stated among these protests are acts of parliament; they are not evidence of the law, but the law: the Parliament that declares the law, makes it: and what is that law? It declares that no statute has force in Ireland until confirmed by the Irish Parliament. What now becomes of the precedents? supposing that they were in point, which they are not; supposing they were numerous, and amounted to a usage; yet precedent cannot repeal act of parliament, but act of parliament sets aside precedent: I say, the claim of England is then set aside by the authority of Parliament; moreover, you will observe, that the Irish acts referred to, namely, the 10th of Henry the Fourth and the 29th of Henry the Sixth, were before most of the precedents quoted, and one of the acts before any usage is pretended or could have existed; besides, the common law of England was introduced into Ireland the 9th of King John, that is before any precedent. But Parliament, or such a legislative assembly, is a part of the common law, and two parliaments are against the common law, but these precedents cannot set aside the common law, no more than it can repeal the statute. So that the claim of England is not a title established by usage, and then set aside by Irish statute, but an attempt to overturn existing statutes, acts of parliament, by acts of power, and to set up violation in the place of law. I might stop here, but Ireland is not confined to the statutes I have mentioned. She has other titles to her freedom in abundance; and first, she has the original compact of Henry the Second with the Irish princes, giving to Henry the crown, to the princes their governments, and to the Irish settlers the English laws. The evidence of that compact are the two historians Giraldus Cambrensis

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and Mathew Paris, the latter of whom was present when it was made: the matter of that compact was, that Ireland should possess the laws and customs of England; and this convention was confirmed by the solemnity of an oath, leges Angliæ gratanter acceptæ et juratoria solemnitate confirmata. Other compacts between kings and their people are not to be found: the compact of England with William the First does not appear to exist in form, and is founded justly, and fairly I think, on a principle that the Crown is a commission; but the Irish compact is an historic transaction. And what is the compact? the laws of England. And what were the laws of England at that time? the laws of the Confessor, the laws which Magna Charta declared, and among them, the great law of liberty, namely, to be bound only by your own assemblies. Then follows the charter of John, and then Magna Charta, the first of Henry the Third, 1216, and in this it is recited, "the city of Dublin shall have her ancient privileges, and all towns, and cities, and boroughs, their free customs". What liberties? what free customs? Was the power of the legislature of another country to shut up their harbours and stop their commerce, one of their free customs? "The King shall not take aids but by the consent of the realm": then the British Parliament cannot tax Ireland. Such is the 29th of the great charter, such the 25th of Edward the First, such the 27th, such the 34th of the same, acts which Ireland adopted after the charter: the 29th of the great charter says: "No freeman shall be taken or disseized of his freehold or free custom, or be outlawed, banished, or destroyed; nor shall the King pass upon him but by the lawful judgment of his peers and the law of the land".

Was the authority of the English Parliament at this time, the time of the charter of Henry the Third, the law of Ireland? Where is the law of conquest now? I appeal to the guilty spirit of the Earl of Strafford, who argued that the word conquest used in the act of the Irish Parliament, was a legislative enactment, enacting the right of conquest by the authority of Parliament. All these acts amount to this position, that the subject who claims these provisions shall not be taxed but by his own parliament or legislature, nor affected in property, life, or limb, but by the laws of his own country. The British Parliament then cannot punish you; it cannot fine you; it cannot tax Ireland; it cannot punish Ireland: then it cannot legislate for Ireland. You will observe that the rights and privileges above mentioned are not securities against the King only, they are certain properties annexed by the laws of these countries to the person of the subject; he is clothed with immunities and privileges: the words are possessive; he is protected against royal oppression, and he

walks the conscious proprietor of the great charter. These laws form a condition for the subject, irreconcilable to the law of conquest, and utterly incompatible with what is set up under pretence of the lawthe power of the British Parliament over Ireland.

There is another act I wish to mention; it is the 34th of Edward the First: "all clerks and laymen shall have their liberties as when they had them the best". Was the power of the English Parliament, that is, of another country over us, our best law? Was conquest our best law? And do not imagine that this act is inoperative because general, or that a franchise need be penned with the subtilty of a penal law; indeed, the Attorney-general of Charles the First thought so, and when he argued against the liberties of the people of England at a conference with the Lords, on the petition of right, said that the statutes of the great charter and other franchises are conceived in general to be expounded, that is to say, to be done away, by precedents: but he lived to feel, in his own impeachment, the vanity of that argument, and found the laws of his country, which he imagined dead to her protection, were alive to his punishment.

I have mentioned certain laws and charters in support of the freedom of Ireland; are they the whole? no, there are more of them, namely, all the laws by which England claims her liberty; they were enacted in Ireland by the 10th of Henry the Seventh. You will observe, that the petition and declaration of right were declaratory of the ancient privileges of England, and that by the Irish act of the 10th of Henry the Seventh, all those are communicated to Ireland; and I beg to set forth these rights and privileges, together with those mentioned before, not only as instruments of freedom, but links of connexion. Ireland has another title in support of her liberty, a Parliament of her own. Parliament is exclusive legislature, it is so ex vi termini; such is the construction by England herself; the modus tenendi parliamentum is in both countries the same; but it is not necessary to establish the modus in order to ascertain the power: the competency of the Parliament of Ireland stands on the same base within this realm as that of the English Parliament within the realm of Great Britain. Like that of England, our legislature is composed of King, Lords, and Commons; but the word king is exclusive, the word lords exclusive, and the word commons exclusive; when you say you are governed by a king, you mean one king, when you say you are governed by a parliament, you mean one parliament: when the judges said that the laws of England did not extend to Ireland because she had a parliament of her own, they said by necessary construction, that the English legislature was not her parliament: it is

truc, if the English legislature choose to name Ireland and usurp legislative authority, the judge cannot question the legislature of his own country; but such a proceeding does not become a matter of right because the judge cannot relieve against it.

I have shown the claim of England is not a case of precedent; violation is not legislation; robbery unpunished does not repeal the decalogue; precedent cannot prevail against an act of parliament; it is a parva consuetudo, not a law; and a course of precedent is a course of violation. Could precedent repeal the great charter? it was thirty times violated; but such violation did not cancel the great charter, but proved so many challenges to re-affirm, re-instate, and glorify that inviolable instrument of public liberty. The reign of Henry the Eighth was a precedent against the privilege of Parliament; forced loans had their precedents; ship money had its precedents. Charles the First imposed a loan by his own authority; five gentlemen refuse to pay it; they are imprisoned by a warrant from the council; they are brought up on their habeas corpus; they produce six laws beside the charter in their favour: the judges rely on precedent, and remand the prisoners: these judges despise the old raws to which they and their predecessors were sworn, and stood on precedents on which those predecessors were perjured; but these franchises survived those pliant judges, and afterwards sat in judgment upon them, and left, in their punishment, a precedent better than their example the triumph of the law over the perjury of the judges. What has been the conduct of the people of England on the subject of precedent? You are armed with her laws-be animated by her example: her declaration of rights, after reciting precedents against the liberty of the subject, says, "all such doings, and so forth, shall be utterly void"; her great charter had set forth that any judgment given to the contrary shall be utterly void; she formed her petition of right upon her birth-right—your birth-right against precedent; she formed her declaration of right on the same ground; she considered the right of kings as defeasible, and the birth-right of the subject as indefeasible, and she deposed a king who had, under the authority of precedent and adjudication, invaded the indefeasible right of the subject, out of which right she formed not only a revolution but a dynasty, that had and has no other foundation than that which depends on the abolishment of every arbitrary maxim in church and state the venal judgment, the violent precedent, and the barefaced impudence of the law of conquest. Has then the birthright of the British subject-your birth-right-been sufficient against precedent (the precedent of the Plantagenets, the precedent of the

Tudors, the precedent of the Stuarts), to form a petition of right, a declaration of right, a revolution, cancel the oath of allegiance, depose James, establish William, royalize the house of Hanover? has our common birth-right done all this for England, and given security to her meanest subject, and clothed her beggar with his sturdiness? and has it left Ireland naked, subject to be bound without your consent, taxed without your consent, with your commerce restricted, an independent army, and a dependent parliament, and your property adjudged by the decisions of another country?

We have done with precedent. She then resorts to authority; to what authority? to her judges. To do what? to repeal acts of parliament by interpretation. What act? Magna Charta-the act that forms the security of the realm. I respect the judges; but in this case I object to their authority, first, because they are partial, being of the country whose power they are to discuss; secondly, because they are dependent, being punishable by the Parliament whose claims they are to arbitrate; thirdly, because they are incompetent, being, by their office, obliged to pronounce the law as Parliament declares; fourthly, because they are inadmissible, being in this case called upon to repeal an act of parliament under the colour of interpretation. The great charter, the 10th of Henry the Fourth, the 29th of Henry the Sixth, the act of faculties, do not want an interpreter; these say, no English statute shall be executed in Ireland till confirmed by the Irish Parliament-no Irish subject to be bound by statutes except ordained within the realm; to say they may, is to repeal, not to interpret; such explanation is violation, not interpretation, and the judge not an authority, but an offender. Besides, the judges are bad arbiters of public liberty; there is no act of power for which you have not a precedent, nor any false doctrine for which you have not an adjudication. Lord Bacon maintained a dispensing power, Lord Coke maintained a dispensing power, Lord Chief Justice Fleming affirmed the power of the King to lay port duties, Judge Blackstone maintained the power of the House of Commons to disqualify by the vote of its own body: when the AttorneyGeneral of Charles the First filed an information against three members of Parliament for their speeches in the House of Commons, the judges of the King's Bench fined and confined them all: there is no adjudication which the judges of England can make against Ireland, that they have not made against their own country. Now, as the people of England have disregarded such authority when urged against their own liberties, so shall we disregard the same authority when urged against ours: we cannot allow England, to plead her