Page images
PDF
EPUB

66

by the first act, which the Irish legislature passed under William and Mary, they had especially recognised, that "the kingdom "of Ireland was annexed and united to the imperial crown of "England, and by the laws and statutes of this kingdom "(Ireland), was declared to be justly and rightfully depending upon and belonging and for ever united to the same," it was clearly impossible to reconcile the theory of perfect independence with the practice: the very exigencies of human policy required, that the predominancy of the power of England should, throughout every department of Irish government and legisla tion, command an ascendency, against which the only remedy lay in an incorporate union. With reason then did the late Lord Clare assure the House of Peers on the 10th of February, 1800,"that our ancestors saw the seeds of disunion in the "connection, which at this time subsisted between Ireland and "England."

The English House of Commons took up the gauntlet with a high hand: a committee was appointed to examine Mr. Molyneux's book, and to report such passages as they should find denying the authority of the parliament of England, and also what proceedings had taken place in Ireland, that might occasion the said pamphlet. On the 22nd of June, 1698, the committee reported the obnoxious passages, and stated, that on enquiry into the proceedings in Ireland, which might occasion the pamphlet, they found in a bill transmitted under the great seal of Ireland, during the late parliament there, intituled, " a Bill for "the better Security of her Majesty's Person and Government,” that the whole of an act passed in England for abrogating the oath of supremacy in Ireland, and appointing other oaths, was re-enacted with some alterations; and that in the same bill, the crown of Ireland was styled the imperial crown of Ireland. Upon this report, the house resolved nemine contradicente; "that the book published by Mr. Molyneux was of dangerous tendency to the crown and people of England, by denying the "authority of the king and parliament of England to bind the "kingdom and people of Ireland, and the subordination and dependance, that Ireland had and ought to have upon England as being united and annexed to the imperial crown of England."

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

which it is understood had been revised and perused by his friend the great Lock, and from whose works several of them had been borrowed, should have met with so different a reception from the advocates and supporters of the principles of the revolution in England. Two persons attempted to answer Mr. Molyneux's book, Mr. Atwood, and Mr. Cary: the latter with infinitely more ability than the former. Atwood was a barrister, and Cary a Bristol merchant. Of their works the Bishop of Derry said: "the merchant argues " and pleads like a counsellor at law and the barrister strings his small wares together like a shopkeeper." (Hist. Lib. p. 139. )

:

Speech of the Earl of Clare, p. 23.

&

They resolved also, " that the bill lately transmitted from Ire"land, whereby an act of parliament made in England express"ly to bind Ireland, is pretended to be re-enacted, had given "occasion and encouragement to forming and publishing the "dangerous positions contained in the said book." The house in a body presented an address to the king, enlarging in terms of great indignation on the book and its pernicious assertions, and on the dangerous tendency of the proceedings of the Irish parliament; beseeching his majesty to exert his royal prudence to prevent their being drawn into example, and to take all neces sary care, that the laws which directed and restrained the parliament of Ireland in their actings, should not be evaded; and concluding with an assurance of their ready concurrence and assistance in a parliamentary way, to preserve and maintain the dependance and subordination of Ireland to the imperial crown of England. The king answered," that he would take care, "that what was complained of should be prevented and redres"sed as the commons desired." Thus were the parliaments of the two countries at issue.

It has been the fate of Ireland to experience more harshness from the English government, than any other part of the British empire: on none has the hand of the conqueror pressed so heavily. The inflexible tenacity of the Irish to their old religion has been generally and not without reason, assigned as the cause of it. Yet singular it is, that under a sovereign, who was called over by the nation as the assertor and protector of their rights and liberties, and under the first Irish parliament, which consisted purely of Protestant members, the absolute paramount sovereignty of England was more loftily claimed and sternly exerted than at any other period. The laws by which the English legislature prohibited the exportation of wool and woollen manufactures from Ireland, upon pain of confiscation, imprisonment, and transportation, and by which no acquittal in Ireland of any offence against these statutes was allowed to be pleaded in bar of any indictment upon them within the kingdom of England, were considered as grievous usurpations upon the independent constitutional rights of Ireland. The English parliament's interference also with the Irish forfeitures created a new and most inveterate ground of jealousy and rancour between the two legislatures.

Although William had been called to the British throne for the avowed purpose of protecting our civil rights and liberties,

• It evidently contradicts the first principles of our constitutional jurisprudence, that a free subject after having been tried upon a penal statute in his own country and acquitted, may be dragged to a foreign land to undergo a second trial for the same offence, without the advantage of a jury of his coun trymen and peers, and probably without witnesses for his defence, or resources for his support.

[ocr errors]

yet no monarch was ever more thwarted by his parliament in his views and inclinations towards his subjects. It might be unfair to charge him with the odium of several public measures, which the violence of party compelled him to yield to. The strong measure of withholding the royal assent from bills, that had passed the two houses of parliament, could not be expected from William, who so peculiarly held his crown by parliamentary tenure. On no occasion were his feelings so severely wounded by the imperious ascendency of his English parliament, as on passing the act for resuming the forfeited estates in Ireland. William had exercised his discretion in making grants of the forfeited lands in Ireland to several, who had either deserved well of their country, or had acquired interest at court. The commons of England were jealous of the king's favours, and charged his majesty with the breach of promise, that he would not grant away any of those lands, but permit them to be sold for the use of the public, in order to clear the heavy expences of the late war. They accordingly resolved to set aside the seventy-six grants he had made. By act of parlia ment, a commission of seven persons was instituted, to enquire into the value of the confiscated estates which had been disposed of, and into the reasons, upon which they had been alienated from the public. There certainly was some personal resentment against the king, in instituting the scrutiny into the reasons of the royal grants. The interference of the English parliament with these concerns of Ireland, was unwarrantable, whilst Ireland had an independent parliament of their own. The English parliament, however, assuming a general tutelary power over every part of the British empire, actually resumed these grants, which they considered the king to have made inconsiderately and extravagantly. The majority of these commissioners were strongly in the interest of the parliament, the other three were more pliant to the wishes of the crown.* The variances between the two contending parties were productive of this beneficial effect to Ireland, that the eyes of the nation were completely opened to the abuses, which prescription seem

It

The court commissioners were Henry Earl of Drogheda, Sir Richard Leving, and Sir Francis Brewster; the parliament commissioners were Francis Annesly, John Trenchard, James Hamilton, and Henry Langford, esquires these four alone signed the report, which is to be seen in the Appendix, No. LI it accounts for the appropriation of 1,060,792 acres. would be difficult to point out the signal services rendered by Mrs. Elizabeth Villiers (she was Countess of Orkney in 1695) in the reduction of Ireland, that entitled her to a grant of 95,649 acres, then worth, per annum, 25,9957. 18s. as will be found by this report. It is to be remarked, that in the seventh article of impeachment against Lord Somers, is contained a charge, that he did advise, promote, and procure divers like grants of the late forfeited estates in Ireland, in contempt of the advice of the commons of England. 3. vol. Parl. Hist. p. 151.

[blocks in formation]

ed to have sanctioned in the appropriation of Irish forfeitures: and which the Irish legislature had hitherto been ever either unable or unwilling to resist. In this contest the country party prevailed, and there having been divers groundless and scandalous aspersions cast upon the four commissioners who were of that party, the commons resolved, that they had acquitted themselves in the execution of that commission with understanding, courage, and integrity and Sir Richard Leving, one of the other three commissioners, was committed to the Tower for having been the author of those reports. Ireland on this occasion was doomed to suffer on both sides; on one from the extravagant grants of the forfeited lands to court favourites, in lieu of applying them to the discharge of the national incumbrances, on the other, by the usurpation and encroachment of the English parliament over the independent sovereignty of the parliament of Ireland. The rights of Ireland were wholly lost in the heat of the contest between the court and country party. The former wishing to reserve some at least of the forfeited lands to the disposal of the crown, put the question, which passed in the negative, and on the next day it was resolved, that the advising, procuring, and passing the said grants of the "forfeited and other estates in Ireland, had been the occasion "of contracting great debts upon the nation, and levying heavy "taxes upon the people: and that the advising and passing the "said grants was highly reflecting on the king's honour and that the officers and instruments concerned in the procuring and "passing these grants, had highly failed in the performance "of their trust and duty." Soon after the act of resumption passed, and the violence done to the king's feelings in giving the royal assent to it, made a deep impression on his mind and spirits, from which he never rallied to the hour of his death. His majesty's extreme displeasure was expressed in his speech to the commons, when they addressed him in relation to the Irish forfeitures. "Gentlemen, I was not led by inclination, "but thought myself obliged in justice to reward those, who "had served well and particularly in the reduction of Ireland "out of the estates forfeited to me by the rebellion there, &c." Which answer, when the speaker reported it, the commons so highly resented, that they resolved," that whoever advised "it, had used his utmost endeavours to create a misunderstanding and jealousy between the king and his people." The soreness of King William on this occasion is fairly accounted for by the observation, that " whereas the late king, who came over here a perfect stranger to our laws and to our people,

[ocr errors]

"66

* Ibid. p. 122.

† 3 vol. Parl. Hist. p. 122.

Swift's Hist. of the Four last years of Anne, p. 240.

"regardless of posterity, wherein he was not likely to survive, "thought he could no better strengthen a new title, than by "purchasing friends at the expence of every thing, which it was "in his power to part with."*

The principal, if not the only obstacle, which William had experienced in establishing himself completely on the throne, was the resistance of King James's Irish subjects. They were the first and last in the field in support of the house of Stuart: and although several penal and severe laws were passed during his reign against the Roman Catholics of Ireland, yet it is but justice to allow, that the royal assent given to them by King William, imported no personal disposition in that monarch to harass or persecute his Catholic subjects on the score of religion. He is generally panegyrized for his spirit of toleration, on account of the act passed in the very first year of his reign,† for easing his Protestant dissenting subjects from the penalties of several laws, which then affected them in common with the Roman Catholics. This, however congenial with the feelings of King William, who was himself a Calvinist or Presbyterian, had been previously arranged by the party that brought him over. It appears certain from Harris's admission and the constant claims of the Irish Catholics, that William had made them a solemn promise to procure them such further security from parliament in the particular of religion, as might prevent them from any future disturbance on that account. In this, however, they were miserably disappointed, not perhaps from that monarch's want of sincerity and favourable disposition towards them, but from his inability to resist the violence of the party, to which he was compelled to yield, to the sore annoyance of his own feelings. Had William been better treated by his English subjects, he would have appeared more amiable in their eyes: for in Holland, where his temper was not ruffled by disappointment and opposition, he was unexceptionably

The late Earl of Clare in his speech so often referred to, (p. 25.) speaking of this difference between the two parliaments, tells us, "that the English colony (a term strongly marking that the Irish parliament was not then the re"presentative of the Irish nation) however sore they might have felt under the "sharp rebuke of their countrymen, were too sensible of the dangers by which they were surrounded and their inability to encounter them, to push this political quarrel to a breach with the English parliament."

[ocr errors]

1 G. and M. c. 18. An Act for exempting their Majesties Protestant Subjects dissenting from the Church of England, from the Penalties of certain

Laws.

Two principal causes however concurred against his being beloved by the generality of his Irish subjects: the first was the enactment of several penal laws against the Roman Catholics; the second was his ready co-operation with the parliament of England to ruin the woollen trade of Ireland. "I shall," said his majesty to the English commons on the 2d of July, 1698, “de all "that lies in me to discourage the woollen manufacture in Ireland.”

« PreviousContinue »