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CHAPTER LXXIV.

ERA OF IMPORTANT POLITICAL CHANGES IN IRELAND, COMMENCING ABOUT EIGHTY YEARS AGO-ASSERTION OF ITS INDEPENDENCE BY THE IRISH PARLIAMENT POYNINGS' LAW-THE APPELLATE JURISDICTION OF THE IRISH HOUSE OF LORDS USURPED BY THE BRITISH HOUSE OF PEERSAPPEAL CAUSES FROM THE IRISH TO THE BRITISH PEERS THE IRISH BARONS OF THE EXCHEQUER, IN THE LAST CASE, OBEY THE BRITISH HOUSE; ORDERED INTO THE CUSTODY OF THE BLACK ROD BY THE IRISH HOUSE-EXCITING CONTROVERSY-PASSING OF THE BRITISH ACT OF 1719,

ANNIHILATING THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT-WRITINGS OF MOLYNEUX, SWIFT, AND LUCAS THEIR IMMENSE SALE AND EFFECT.

AN era of important political changes in Ireland commenced with the relaxation of the penal laws, about eighty years ago. The first of these was the assertion of its independence by the Irish Parliament. By Poynings' law, in the year 1495,' it was enacted that all measures to be passed by the Irish Parliament should first be submitted to and approved of by the king and his council in England, and if sent back altered by them could be passed in no other form than as so altered.

Notwithstanding this curtailment of the legislative powers of the Parliament of Ireland, a complete usurpation of those powers, as well as of the judicial rights and functions of the Irish House of Lords, was carried into effect by the Parliament of England in 1719. The following circumstances preluded this extraordinary state of affairs.

In 1698, the Irish House of Lords having decided an appeal case in favour of the Bishop of Derry against the Irish Society, or London companies in that county, the latter appealed from this decision to the English House of Lords, who declared that the appeal in Ireland was coram non judice, and therefore was null and void. In other words, they arrogated to themselves

1 10th Henry VII. c. 4, and 3rd and 4th Philip and Mary, c. 4. For Poynings' Law, see Appendix XVII.

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the appellate jurisdiction in Irish causes which had ever been exercised by the Irish peers. The Irish House thereupon passed resolutions asserting their rights and protesting against this unconstitutional invasion of them.

Again, in 1703, in the case of the Earl and Countess of Meath versus Lord Ward, the earl and countess, who had been dispossessed of their lands by an order of the English House of Lords, were reinstated by the Irish Peers, who repeated their resolutions and protest as above.

Next, in the same year, a cause respecting the ownership of an estate, between Hester Sherlock and Maurice Annesley, was tried by the Court of Exchequer in Ireland, and judgment was given in favour of the latter; but, on appeal, that judgment was reversed by the Irish House of Lords. On this, Annesley appealed to the English Peers, who reversed the decision of the Irish House, and ordered him to be put in possession. Sherlock appealed against this decision to the Irish Peers, and they, feeling that the dignity of their House and the privileges of the nation were deeply involved, submitted to the consideration of the judges the question, whether an appeal lay from a decree of the Court of Exchequer in Ireland to the King and Parliament of Great Britain. The judges decided in the negative, and the peers resolved that they would assert their honour, jurisdiction, and privileges, by giving the petitioner Hester Sherlock effectual relief, pursuant to a former order. On this, the sheriff of Kildare put Sherlock in possession of the premises. But the Court of Exchequer, agreeably to an order of the British House of Lords, issued an injunction, commanding him to restore Annesley to the possession of the lands. This the sheriff refused to do, and was fined accordingly. He thereupon petitioned the Irish House, who passed a resolution approving his conduct, taking off the fines imposed on him, and declaring that the barons of the Exchequer had acted in violation of the orders of that House, in diminution of the king's prerogative, as also of the rights and privileges of the kingdom of Ireland and the

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Parliament thereof. They then issued orders that the barons of the Exchequer—namely, Jeffrey Gilbert, Esq., John Pocklington, Esq., and Sir John St. Leger, should, for this offence, be taken into the custody of the Black Rod, which orders were forthwith executed.

The Irish Peers next drew up and submitted a dutiful address to the king, in vindication of their proceedings in this matter, and of the rights of the nation. This address was laid before the British House of Lords; but they, notwithstanding, persisted in the course they had adopted, and resolved that the barons of the Court of Exchequer in Ireland in their proceedings in the cause between Annesley and Sherlock, in obedience to their orders, had acted with courage according to law, in support of his Majesty's prerogative, and with fidelity to the crown of Great Britain; and that an humble address be presented to his Majesty, to confer on them some mark of his royal favour, as a recompense for the injuries they had received, by being unjustly censured and illegally imprisoned for doing their duty.'

These resolutions passed, with only one dissentient. The British Lords then initiated a bill for better securing the dependency of the kingdom of Ireland upon the crown of Great Britain' Although strongly disapproved of by some members of the Commons, this Bill passed both Houses.3

2

It enacts that

The kingdom of Ireland hath been, is, and of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon, the imperial crown of Great Britain, being inseparably united and annexed thereunto, and 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, affirm, or

26 George I. c. 5. A.D. 1719.

1 The Duke of Leeds. The numbers on the division in the Commons were 140 to 83: majority for the bill 57.

reverse 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, null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever.

This law was enacted at a period when, as we have already seen, the nation was utterly prostrate and powerless to resist.' There was no choice but to submit.

Some years before had been published Mr. Molyneux's 'Case of Ireland,' asserting the rights of Ireland against the unjust and unconstitutional encroachments and usurpation of the English Parliament. He was followed by Dean Swift, whose unrivalled pen was devoted to the same purpose, and by Dr. Charles Lucas, member for Dublin, and the author of several able political pamphlets. The British Parliament, unable to refute the arguments of Mr. Molyneux, ordered his book to be burned by the common hangman. This injudicious act only increased its popularity. Swift's Drapier's letters were hawked about the streets of Dublin at one penny each, and sold in countless thousands. Dr. Lucas's pamphlets enjoyed a like circulation.

These publications were read with avidity, and pondered on by the whole nation, from the peer to the peasant; and, although there were many points of difference, many elements of discord, many causes of mutual estrangement among the several classes, arising out of a vicious political system, the truths so forcibly enunciated by those gifted and patriotic writers went home to every heart, and making men, for the time, overlook the other wrongs under which they suffered, created a singular unanimity, a community of feeling, on the

1 In an earlier page we have read Dean Swift's account of this period, in which he strongly protests against the two provisions of this Act, and the evils thereby entailed on the people of Ireland.

2 The Case of Ireland' was written in 1698, as a protest against the order of the English peers in the cause of the Irish Society against the Bishop of Derry.

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one common subject of the national rights and the national honour.

Both Houses of Parliament were leavened by the poison of bigotry and persecution, the result of centuries of misrule, it is true. They, or rather the great majority of both Houses, passed penal laws, to order, and excluded the Catholic population from all political and civil rights and privileges. They were, indeed, a subservient Parliament, the Commons being elected for the life-time of the monarch, and thus virtually irresponsible to their constituents. However, the fire of patriotism was not altogether extinguished. Molyneux and Swift and Lucas had passed away, but their spirit survived.

1 The Parliaments of England were made septennial in 1761, by the 1st of George I. chapter 38. Doctor Lucas brought in a Bill to the same purport for Ireland in the Irish Parliament on October 28, 1761, but it was thrown out by 108 to 43. Thenceforward the subject was much agitated by Lucas and other patriotic men; and in 1767 an Act was passed making the Parliaments of Ireland octennial, the alteration from seven years, as proposed in Ireland, having been made in England, and the Bill thus altered having been sent back to Ireland. This Act is the 7th of George III. c. 3. 'Irish Statutes,' vol. ix. p. 504.