XXXVIII. CHAP. solved to be free." They expressed, however, in their resolutions, with only two dissenting voices, their approbation of the conduct of parliament in having relaxed the penal statutes against catholics, avowing that they rejoiced in the measure as christians and protestants. Parliamentary transac 1781-1782. The parliament had been convened on the ninth tions. of October 1781, and had voted the thanks of both houses to the volunteer companies for the offers which they had made of their services to the viceroy. Yet a ministerial majority continued to negative the important questions, proposed by the patriotic members, and loudly supported by the voice of the volunteers and of the public in general, for the commercial and political emancipation of Ireland. One of these questions was for a committee to enquire into the state of the trade between Portugal and Ireland, since manufactured goods, exported from the latter to the former, had been, probably by British influence, detained, as illegal, in the custom-house of Lisbon, and precluded from sale. Others were on motions made for a limited mutiny-bill; for an examination into the perverted law of Poyning; and for an address to the king, founded on the resolutions of Dungannon, in which, among other matters, declaration should be made, “That no means could be suggested, by which the connection of Ireland with Great-Britain could be so strengthened, as by a renunciation of the claim of the British parliament to make laws for Ireland." Two bills, however, in favour of catho XXXVIII, lics, passed into laws, without any apparent interfe- CHAP. rence of the ministry; one for extending their privileges with respect to landed property, and for the removal of some penalties from such Romish clergy as should take the oath of allegiance and be registered; the other for allowing, under a few restrictions, catholics to educate youth, and to be guardians to children. lic affairs. 1782. The situation of Ireland was at this time critical. State of pubThe taxes were deficient, and the national debt had been augmented to two millions and six hundred and seventy thousand pounds; while the people, irritated against government, and conceiving themselves betrayed by their parliamentary representatives, looked only to the volunteers for a redress of their complaints. These, by their union, had become more formidable than ever, as the resolutions of Dungannon had been adopted throughout the kingdom, committees of correspondence had been formed, and a national committee to regulate the whole system. What might have been the consequence, if government had persevered in its plan of incompliance, which most probably would have been the case if the American war had proved less unsuccessful, is happily matter only of conjecture. Doubtless the catholics, in the melancholy case of a civil war in Ireland, would have joined the protestant volunteers against the royal army; but how such a coalition could have been maintained to any effective purpose is extremely problematical. Providentially for this kingdom, and for Great-Britain, XXXVIII. CHAP. the tory ministry, who had so long inauspiciously 'conducted the affairs of the British empire, unable any longer to stem the tide of public indignation and adverse events, when the American states had unequivocally established their independence by force. of arms, resigned their places at the end of March 1782, after a sacrifice of a hundred thousand British lives, and the addition of above a hundred millions to the national debt of Britain, in their attempts to attain an object useless to the power, and ruinous to the liberty, of the British nation. A whig administration succeeded, in which the marquis of Rockingham was placed at the head of the treasury, the famous Charles Fox was nominated one of the secretaries of state, and the duke of Portland was appointed, in the place of lord Carlisle, lord-lieutenant of Ireland. Irish revolution. After this happy change messages were delivered 1782. to the British and Irish parliaments from his Ma-· jesty, to the former by Charles Fox on the ninth of April, to the latter by John Hely Hutchinson, on the sixteenth, " recommending to their most serious consideration the state of affairs in Ireland, in order to such a final adjustment as might give mutual sa¬ tisfaction to both kingdoms." Henry Grattan made a motion for an address to the king, similar to that for which, founded on the resolutions of Dungan non, he had before made in vain, in an energetic speech, in which he pronounced a just eulogy on the volunteers, and strong assertions on the rights of Ireland, declaring that "allied by liberty still more XXXVIII. more than by allegiance, Great-Britain and Ireland CHA P. formed a constitutional confederacy: that the perpetual annexion to the crown was a powerful bond of union, but Magna Charta still more efficacious: that to find any where a king would be easy, but to England only could the Irish look for a constitution: that by charter, not by conquest, was the mutual connexion of the two countries originally established: that every true Irishman would say, liberty with England, if England is so disposed; but at all events liberty." Both houses unanimously agreed in this famous address, in which they affirmed that "the crown of Ireland was an imperial crown, inseparately annexed to the crown of Great-Britain: but that the kingdom of Ireland was a distinct kingdom, with a parliament of her own, the sole legislature thereof: that in this right they conceived the very essence of their liberty to exist: that in behalf of all the people of Ireland they claimed this as their birth-right, and could not relinquish it but with their lives that they had a high veneration for the British character: and that their determination was, in sharing the freedom of England, to share also her fate, and to stand or fall with the British nation." In a speech of the viceroy to both houses, on the twenty-seventh of May, he assured them that "the British legislature had concurred in a resolution to remove the causes of their discontents;" and that his Majesty was graciously disposed to give his royal assent to acts calculated for their satisfaction. A principal T 3 XXXVIII. CHAP. principal subject of complaint was the practice founded on the law of Poyning, by which the political constitution of Ireland was rendered materially different from that of England. Of this law, and its modification in the reign of Mary, I have spoken at the end of the thirteenth chapter. By the established practice, whence the Irish parliament had become little better than the register of royal edicts, the heads, or substance, of bills were, by the leave of either house, introduced; and, if admitted by a majority, laid before the viceroy and privy-council, who might totally suppress them, or certify them into England under the great seal of Ireland altered or unaltered. If they were sent back under the great seal of England without alteration, and approved by the majority of that house of the Irish parliament in which they had not originated, they passed into law by the royal assent delivered by the viceroy. When a bill was returned with alterations made in it by the British or Irish privy-council, it sometimes passed through the Irish parliament into law without further ceremony; but in general was either totally rejected, or new modelled according to the alterations, and sent on the same progress as at first. By a law now enacted all in terference of privy-councils to alter Irish bills was abolished, and the parliament of Ireland put into the same state of independence, with respect to its legislation, as that of Britain. As acts were also passed for the limitation of the law against mutiny to two years, for the right of Habeas corpus, and for |