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Hester Sherlock and Maurice Annesley, the latter CHAP. obtained from the court of Exchequer a decree in his favour, which on an appeal was reversed by the Irish lords. Appealing from their judgment to the British lords, Annesley was gratified with a confirmation of the first sentence, and an order for his being put in possession of the disputed ground. The Irish peers, on a petition from Sherlock for relief, proposed a question to the judges, whether by the laws of the land an appeal should lie from a decree of the court of Exchequer in Ireland to the king in parliament in Great-Britain? Having received an answer in the negative, the peers passed a resolution, that they would support their honour, jurisdiction, and privileges, in the affording of effectual relief to their petitioner, according to their order formerly given. But they afterwards received a petition from the sheriff of Kildare, Alexander Burrowes, in which he stated that, when he had entered on his office, he was commanded by an injunction from the court of Exchequer to restore Annesley to the possession of the contested lands, which had been delivered to Hester Sherlock by the late sheriff; that he was fined for disobedience; and that through fear of an arrest, he had not come to pass his accounts, in consequence of which he was also fined in twelve hundred pounds. By the resolutions of the lords the sheriff's conduct was approved, his fines annulled, the barons of the Exchequer taken into custody, and a memorial presented to his Majesty in vindication of their own conduct and of the national rights. In VOL. II.

P

the

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CHAP. the conclusion of their statement they inform the king, that his deputy-receiver had paid Hester Sherlock above eighteen hundred pounds, to prevent any farther applications from her to the Irish parliament, the repayment of which money was expected from government.

The last circumstance may serve to shew an influence unfriendly to the views of the Irish peers. When their memorial, which maintained, as far as reason could go, the independence of the Irish parliament, was read before the British peers, the latter voted resolutions, in which the barons of the Irish Exchequer were commended for their conduct, and his Majesty supplicated to confer on them some mark of his favour for their sufferings by unjust censure and imprisonment. The duke of Leeds, with a magnanimity and sense of justice most honourable to his memory, entered against these proceedings his protest, containing fourteen articles, in the eleventh of which he noticed the great iniquity of obliging men to resort to a far distant tribunal, out of their own country, at expences insupportable by any except the rich, who must thereby be enabled to practise injustice with impunity. Not satisfied with these resolutions, the British peers enacted a bill, which also passed the commons by a majority of a hundred and forty against eighty-three, and was confirmed into a law by the royal assent, styled "An act for the better securing the dependency of Ireland on the crown of Great-Britain," by which the Irish houSE of lords was deprived of the right of judicature in

appeals,

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appeals, and the legislative authority of the Irish par- CHAP. liament placed in a very problematical situation, since in this act the British parliament was declared to have "full power and authority to make laws and statutes, of sufficient force and validity, to bind the people of the kingdom of Ireland.”

ous transac

Notwithstanding the degrading state of subjection Miscellane to which the Irish parliament and nation were re-tions. duced, such a spirit of opposition was raised among the people in 1724, against a measure favoured by the ruling party in Britain, that the British cabinet thought proper to relinquish the business. Until then, from the encroaching act of the British legisla❤ ture, few matters worth notice occurred. Precluded from the benefits of industry by restricting laws, the people were so miserably poor, that the famous Jonathan Swift, dean of Saint-Patrick's, a zealous patriot for the Irish nation, and actuated with uncommonly great philanthropy, declared that he "rejoiced at a mortality as a blessing to individuals and the public." The same system of administration, which had been adopted in the reign of William, continued through this period and long after it. The catholics were reduced to a political non-existence by the Irish parliament, and the Irish nation to a very low state of permanent weakness by the parliament of Britain, and the plan of administration. The viceroy, nominally vested with the executive government, came commonly for a short time once in two years, leaving the real power to lords justices, chosen from the principal state-officers of the country,

P 2

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CHAP. Country, and principally occupied in the consolidation of an aristocratic influence for effectuating the plans of the British cabinet. The ascendancy in the house of commons was held by whigs, hostile to the catholics as Jacobites, and favourable to the presbyterians. Hence a law was enacted in 1719, when the duke of Bolton was lord-lieutenant "for exempting the protestant dissenters from certain penalties to which they were subject;" and in 1723, in the administration of the duke of Grafton, heads of a bill for additional severities against catholics passed the commons, but the farther progress of the business was prevented by its suppression in England. As in the councils, by which Ireland was governed, its prosperity was manifestly no object, a number of men, real friends to their country's welfare, formed, in conjunction with the old tories, who had been habituated to contend against the whigs from less laudable motives, a party, called the patriots, to oppose the ministry. The soul of this party was the admirable Swift, whose writings excited in many of his countrymen a sense of their situation and true interest, the first success of which was the defeating of a job favoured by the ministry.

Wood's

coinage.

To remedy the inconvenience arising from a scar1724. city of copper money in Ireland, instead of a coinage from a royal mint, which had been repeatedly solicited, a royal patent was granted to an Englishman, William Wood, for the coining of halfpence and farthings to the value of a hundred and eight thousand pounds for circulation in this kingdom.

Men

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Men of all ranks were alarmed at the apprehended CHAP. consequences, represented as ruinous to the nation in the pamphlets of Swift, which were published under the fictitious title of the Drapier's Letters. The coin was represented as deficient in weight and quality of metal to such a degree, that the amount of a shilling, in nominal value, was intrinsically worth not more than a penny: Wood might pour clandestinely into the kingdom a greater quantity than his patent authorized foreigners might counterfeit the stamp, and swell the inundation of base metal; and, when this medium should inevitably sink in exchange to its real value, the entire loss must fall on the people of Ireland. Addresses to his Majesty against the patent were voted by the Irish parliament, and most of the cities. The grand jury of the county of Dublin presented as enemies to government, all who should attempt to put this coin into circulation; and it was almost universally decried by the gentlemen at the quarter sessions throughout the country. On the other hand, the British privy-council published a report in approbation of the coin, and severe condemnation of the Irish parliament's address. But, as the Irish privy-council, and the partizans of the British ministry in Ireland, particularly primate Boulter, recommended to his Majesty to allay the general discontent, the patent was revoked in 1725.

Some English writers have considered the complaints of Swift and the Irish as in this case unfounded and factious; but why should the furnishing of coin