true, 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 aws 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 daings, 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

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Tudors, the precedent of the Stuarts), to form a petition of right, 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 hiɛ 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

magna charta against the authority of her judges, and set up the authority of her judges against the magna charta of Ireland; nor must she answer her judges with the principles of the revolution, and answer Ireland with the principles of the jacobites; for neither judgments, nor judges' opinions, nor precedents, are laws; still less can they repeal laws, still less franchises, and least of all, charters: these things read themselves without a judge, and in despite of him; they put forth a subterranean voice even against kings, and, though buried for ages, like the blood of the murdered man, they rise up in judgment, and call for justice.

Let them now produce their judges. There are four remarkable adjudications on this subject; one has been against us, and three have been in our favour: the one against us, is the case of the staple act, the English act of the 2nd of Henry the Sixth; it was a case where Ireland was specially named and forbidden to export woollen to Calais; the first decision adjudged that Ireland was not bound by this act; the decision was made in the time of Richard the Third by all the judges of England assembled in the Exchequer Chamber; this case afterwards, in the reign of Henry the Seventh, was, by Lord Chief Justice Hussey, decided against us, his brethren not much dissenting; the reporter (Brooke) doubts the legality of his opinion, and Lord Coke approves of the contrary opinion, namely, of the original determination of the judges assembled in the Exchequer Chamber. Under these circumstances stands the decision which is against us: of the three decisions which were for us, I have stated one already (the case of the Court of High Commission in Ireland); another was the case of a patent given to one Pilkington, of an office in Ireland, which he discharged by deputy. A. got a patent for the same office, and Pilkington brought a scire facias to the court in England, 20th of Henry the Sixth, against A., to show cause why the patent should not be repealed. A. pleaded that the Irish Parliament had by an act required that the said office should be discharged in person, or forfeited, and then he prescribed for the Irish Parliament, and the prescription was allowed. The third decision is that of the judges of Ireland on queries put to them by the Lords at the request of the Commons; the first query was as follows: Whether the subjects of Ireland be a free people, and to be governed only by the common law of England and statutes of force in this kingdom? To which query all the judges answered in the affirmative they point out where the common law, in some instances, differs from that of England, and where equity interferes; but with respect to the question, whether the subjects of Ireland be a free peo

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ple, to be bound only by the common law of England and the Irish statutes, their assent is unqualified: such is the answer; and this the answer of the seven judges of Ireland given in writing with their names affixed. The other authorities are the opinions of judges given in their books; one of these opinions is that of Mr. Justice Blackstone; a very considerable name: but what are his arguments? what has this oracle pronounced? namely, that the Parliament of England has settled her own right by her own ipse dixit; she has settled the matter, he says, by the declaratory act of the 6th of George the First; certainly she has settled the matter for this Rhadamanthus; but his remark proves only, that the Parliament of England had authority over her judge, but it does not prove that she had authority over Ireland: certainly the judge cannot question the legislature, and therefore ought not in such a case to be an arbiter, and of course is not an authority. Having settled the question by the authority of Parliament, he adds his own reasons: they are worse than that authority: Ireland, he says, is a kind of colony planted by England, and then he rests the right of England on conquest: to which we answer, she is not a colony, she is not a kind of colony; that she was not planted by England, that she was not conquered, and that, if she were, she has compacts, charters, and laws to do away what is called the right of conquest. I must observe, this grave and learned judge does not in this case exert him self within his own science, craft, or mystery; he speaks on the history of Ireland and the laws of nations, and is erroneous in both. Next is introduced the thunderbolt of the law, the English MinosLord Coke; a great authority, a friend to liberty, and the principal framer of the Bill of Rights; but this Leviathan does not combat here in his own waters; he moves in another element; and, though in every element portentous and prepollent, is not omnipotent here: he declares that Ireland is not bound by the English Parliament, and gives his reasons, viz., because she has a parliament of her own, and does not send representatives to the Parliament of England; and then he adds, not bound "except when she is especially named", which does not, however, remove the force of his reason, but leaves it to act against the exception as well as against the general proposition, for she has not, when named, a parliament the less, nor a representative the more: he then quotes a precedent-it is where England bound Ireland when Ireland sent representatives to Eng. land: and he infers from thence, that England can bind Ireland when she does not; and, finally, he rests his opinion on a law which goes to overturn the liberty of his own country as well as of ours-the

law of conquest. So is Vaughan: he sets in the gulf in which his learned brethren, the other lights of the law, are extinguished-the law of conquest: so are they all-they all rest on this law.

I have shown that England has no title by the law of nature, uo title by the law of covenant, no title by the law of usage; the best authorities, Locke, Burlemachi, Hooker-independent philosophersbetter authority than dependent judges, have pronounced it so. Will the claim by conquest? It only extends to a certain description of the generation conquered, and it is extinguished by pacts, charters. and laws; let me add, that Ireland was not conquered, and supposing her to have been so, I have produced pacts, charters, and laws innumerable. Further, I beg to say, that the authorities quoted, even those quoted against us, refute the idea of conquest. The judges in Pilkington's case, who allow the prescription for the Irish Parliament, give up the idea of conquest. My Lord Coke himself, who affirms that Ireland has a parliament of her own, precludes the idea of conquest; the seven judges of Ireland, who acknowledged that the Irish were a free people, and to be governed only by the common law of England and the statutes of Ireland, preclude the idea of conquest. Henry the Second, who professed to take Ireland by the grant of the Pope, renounced thereby the idea of conquest. He made a covenant with the Irish chieftains; they acknowledged him their sovereign, and he confirmed to them their petty governments. He made a covenant with the English settlers, they swearing allegiance to him, and he communicating to them the laws and liberties of England. "Nothing obtained except in a just war; no right over the posterity of the conquered". Such is Locke. "Conquest cannot give title; it is a means to obtain; and that title cannot be good except by the consent, express or tacit, of the people". Such is Burlemachi. "If the people do not voluntarily submit, a state of war exists". Such is Vattal. What says England? Mr. Pym, in Lord Strafford's im peachment, speaks as follows: "The law is the safeguard of all pri vate interests; without this every man has a right to do everything. And this is the case to which the Irish were reduced by the Earl of Strafford; and the reason he gave hath more mischief than the thing itself, viz., that they were a conquered nation. There are few nations in the world that have not been conquered; but if pacts and agreements do not restrain that, what people can be free? England hath been conquered, Wales hath been conquered, and by this reason will be little better than Ireland". Thus speaks Mr. Pym. What says the English House of Commons? It says, "that the realm of Ireland having been time out of mind annexed to the imperial Crown or