to his home when the ascendency of his own caste nad been reëstablished, and he had been chosen to represent the University of Dublin in the House of Commons. He had made great efforts to promote the manufactures of the kingdom in which he resided, and he had found those efforts impeded by an act of the English Parliament, which laid severe restrictions on the exportation of woollen goods from Ireland. In principle this act was altogether indefensible. Practically it was altogether unimportant. Prohibitions were not needed to prevent the Ireland of the seventeenth century from being a great manufacturing country, nor could the most liberal bounties have made her so. The jealousy of commerce, however, is as fanciful and unreasonable as the jealousy of love. The clothiers of Wilts and Yorkshire were weak enough to imagine that they should be ruined by the competition of a half barbarous island an island where there was far less capital than in England, where there was far less security for life and property than in England, and where there was far less industry and energy among the laboring classes than in England. Molyneux, on the other hand, had the sanguine temperament of a projector. He imagined that, but for the tyrannical interference of strangers, a Ghent would spring up in Connemara, and a Bruges in the Bog of Allen. And what right had strangers to interfere? Not content with showing that the law of which he complained was absurd and unjust, he undertook to prove that it was null and void. Early in the year 1698 he published and dedicated to the king a treatise in which it was asserted in plain terms that the English Parliament had no authority over Ireland.

Whoever considers without passion or prejudice the great constitutional question which was thus for the first time raised, will probably be of opinion that Molyneux was in error. The right of the Parliament of England to legislate for Ireland rested on the broad general principle that the paramount authority of the mother country extends over all colonies planted by her sons in all parts of the world. This principle was the subject of much discussion at the time of the American troubles, and was then maintained, without any reservation, not only by the English ministers, but by Burke and all the adherents of Rockingham, and was admitted, with one single reservation, even by the Americans themselves.

Down to the moment of separation the Congress fully acknowledged the competency of the King, Lords, and Commons to make laws, of any kind but one, for Massa. chusetts and Virginia. The only power which such men as Washington and Franklin denied to the imperial Legis lature was the power of taxing. Within living memory, acts which have made great political and social revolu tions in our colonies have been passed in this country; nor has the validity of those acts ever been questioned; and conspicuous among them were the law of 1807 which abolished the slave-trade, and the law of 1833 which abolished slavery.

The doctrine that the parent state has supreme power over the colonies is not only borne out by authority and by precedent, but will appear, when examined, to be in entire accordance with justice and with policy. During the feeble infancy of colonies, independence would be pernicious, or rather fatal to them. Undoubtedly, as they grow stronger and stronger, it will be wise in the home government to be more and more indulgent. No sensible parent deals with a son of twenty in the same way as with a son of ten. Nor will any government not infatuated treat such a province as Canada or Victoria in the way in which it might be proper to treat a little band of emigrants who have just begun to build their huts on a barbarous shore, and to whom the protection of the flag of a great nation is indispensably necessary. Nevertheless, there cannot really be more than one supreme power in a society. If, therefore, a time comes at which the mother country finds it expedient altogether to abdicate her paramount authority over a colony, one of two courses ought to be taken. There ought to be

complete incorporation, if such incorporation be possible. If not, there ought to be complete separation. Very few propositions in politics can be so perfectly demonstrated as this, that parliamentary government cannot be carried on by two really equal and independent Parliaments in one empire.

And, if we admit the general rule to be that the English Parliament is competent to legislate for colonies planted by English subjects, what reason was there for considering the case of the colony in Ireland as an exception? For it is to be observed that the whole question was between the mother country and the colony. The aboriginal inhabi

tants, more than five sixths of the population, had no wore interest in the matter than the swine or the poultry; or, if they had an interest, it was for their interest that the caste which domineered over them should not be emanci

pated from all external control. They were no more rep

resented in the Parliament which sat at Dublin than in the Parliament which sat at Westminster. They had less to dread from legislation at Westminster than from legislation at Dublin. They were, indeed, likely to obtain but a very scanty measure of justice from the English Tories, a more scanty measure still from the English Whigs; but the most acrimonious English Whig did not feel towards them that intense antipathy, compounded of hatred, fear, and scorn, with which they were regarded by the Cromwellian who dwelt among them.* For the Irishry, Molyneux, though boasting that he was the champion of liberty, though professing to have learned his political principles from Locke's writings, and though confidently expecting Locke's applause, asked nothing but a more cruel and more hopeless slavery. What he claimed was that, as respected the colony to which he belonged, England should forego rights which she has exercised and is still exercising over every other colony that she has ever planted. And what reason could be given for making such a distinction? No colony had owed so much to England. No colony stood in such need of the support of England. Twice, within the memory of men then living, the natives had attempted to throw off the alien yoke; twice the intruders had been in immi

*That a portion at least of the native population of Ireland locked to the Parliament at Westminster for protection against the tyranny of the Parliament at Dublin appears from a paper entitled The Case of the Roman Catholic Nation of Ireland. This paper, written in 1711 by one of the oppressed race and religion, is in a MS. belonging to Lord Fingal. The Parliament of Ireland is accused of treating the Irish worse than the Turks treat the Christians, worse than the Egyptians treated the Israelites. "Therefore," says the writer, "they (the Irish) apply themselves to the present Parliament of Great Britain as a Parliament of nice honor and stanch justice. . . . Their request then is, that this great Parliament may make good the Treaty of Limerick in all the Civil Articles." In order to propitiate those tc whom he makes this appeal, he accuses the Irish Parliament of encroaching on the supreme authority of the English Parliament, and charges the colonists generally with ingratitude to the mother coun try to which they owe so much.

nent danger of extirpation; twice England had come to the rescue, and had put down the Celtic population under the feet of her own progeny. Millions of English money had been expended in the struggle. English blood had flowed at the Boyne and at Athlone, at Aghrim and at Limerick. The graves of thousands of English soldiers had been dug in the pestilential morass of Dundalk. It was owing to the exertions and sacrifices of the English people that, from the basaltic pillars of Ulster to the lakes of Kerry, the Saxon settlers were trampling on the children of the soil. The colony in Ireland was therefore emphatically a dependency-a dependency, not merely by the common law of the realm, but by the nature of things. It was absurd to claim independence for a community which could not cease to be dependent without ceasing to exist.

Molyneux soon found that he had ventured on a perilous undertaking. A member of the English House of Commons complained in his place that a book which attacked the most precious privileges of the supreme Legislature was in circulation. The volume was produced; some passages were read; and a committee was appointed to consider the whole subject. The committee soon reported that the obnoxious pamphlet was only one of several symptoms which indicated a spirit such as ought to be suppressed. The crown of Ireland had been most improperly described in public instruments as an imperial crown. The Irish Lords and Commons had presumed not only to reenact an English act passed expressly for the purpose of binding them, but to reenact it with alterations. The alterations were indeed small; but the alteration even of a letter was tantamount to a declaration of independence. Several addresses were voted without a division. The king was entreated to discourage all encroachments of subordinate powers on the supreme authority of the English Legislature, to bring to justice the pamphleteer who had dared to question that authority, to enforce the acts which had been passed for the protection of the woollen manufactures of England, and to direct the industry and capital of Ireland into the channel of the linen trade, a trade which might grow and flour. 1sh in Leinster and Ulster without exciting the smallest jeal ousy at Norwich or at Halifax.

The king promised to do what the Commons asked; but, in truth, there was little to be done. The Irish, conscious of

their impotence, submitted without a murmur. The Irish woollen manufacture languished and disappeared, as it would, in all probability, have languished and disappeared if it had been left to itself. Had Molyneux lived a few months longer he would probably have been impeached. But the close of the session was approaching, and before the houses met again a timely death had snatched him from their vengeance; and the momentous question which had been first stirred by him slept a deep sleep till it was revived in a more formidable shape, after the lapse of twenty-six years, by the fourth let ter of The Drapier.

Of the commercial questions, which prolonged this session far into the summer, the most important respected India. Four years had elapsed since the House of Commons had decided that all Englishmen had an equal right to traffic in the Asiatic Seas, unless prohibited by Parliament; and in that decision the king had thought it prudent to acquiesce. Any merchant of London or Bristol might now fit out a ship for Bengal or for China, without the least apprehension of being molested by the Admiralty or sued in the Courts of Westminster. No wise man, however, was disposed to stake a large sum on such a venture. For the vote which protected him from annoyance here left him exposed to serious risks on the other side of the Cape of Good Hope. The Old Company, though its exclusive privileges were no more, and though its dividends had greatly diminished, was still in existence, and still retained its castles and warehouses, its fleet of fine merchantmen, and its able and zealous factors, thoroughly qualified by a long experience to transact business both in the palaces and in the bazaars of the East, and accustomed to look for direction to the India House alone. The private trader, therefore, still ran great risk of being treated as a smuggler, if not as a pirate. He might indeed, if he was wronged, apply for redress to the tribunals of his country. But years must elapse before his cause could be heard; his witnesses must be conveyed over fifteen thousand miles of sea; and, in the mean time, he was a ruined man. The experiment of free trade with India had therefore been tried under every disadvantage, or, to speak more correctly, had not been tried at all. The general opinion had always been that some restriction was necessary, and that opinion had been confirmed by all that had happened since the old restrictions had been removed. The doors of the House of Commons