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and the issue of their affairs showed that they had not chosen the most perfect standard. But, Sir, I am sure that I shall not be misled when, in a case of constitutional difficulty, I consult the genius of the English Constitution. Consulting at that oracle (it was with all 5 due humility and piety), I found four capital examples in a similar case before me: those of Ireland, Wales, Chester and Durham.

Ireland, before the English conquest, though never governed by a despotic power, had no Parliament. How 10 far the English Parliament itself was at that time modelled according to the present form is disputed among antiquarians. But we have all the reason in the world to be assured that a form of Parliament such as England then enjoyed she instantly communicated to Ireland; 15 and we are equally sure that almost every successive improvement in constitutional liberty, as fast as it was made here, was transmitted thither. The feudal baronage and the feudal knighthood, the roots of our primitive constitution, were early transplanted into that soil, and 20 grew and flourished there. Magna Charta, if it did not give us originally a House of Commons, gave us at least a House of Commons of weight and consequence. But your ancestors did not churlishly sit down alone to the feast of Magna Charta. Ireland was made im- 25 mediately a partaker. This benefit of English laws and liberties, I confess, was not at first extended to all Ireland. Mark the consequence. English authority and English liberties had exactly the same boundaries.

Your standard could never be advanced an inch before your privileges. Sir John Davies shows beyond a doubt that the refusal of a general communication of these rights was the true cause why Ireland was five hundred 5 years in subduing1; and after the vain projects of a military government, attempted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it was soon discovered that nothing could make that country English, in civility and allegiance, but your laws and your forms of legislature. It was not English 10 arms, but the English Constitution, that conquered Ireland. From that time Ireland has ever had a general Parliament, as she had before a partial Parliament. You changed the people, you altered the religion, but you never touched the form or the vital substance of free 15 government in that kingdom. You deposed kings; you restored them; you altered the succession to theirs as well as to your own crown; but you never altered their constitution, the principle of which was respected by usurpation, restored with the restoration of monarchy, 20 and established, I trust, forever by the glorious Revolution. This has made Ireland the great and flourishing kingdom that it is: and from a disgrace and a burden intolerable to this nation, has rendered her a principal part of her strength and ornament. This country cannot 25 be said to have ever formally taxed her. The irregular things done in the confusion of mighty troubles and on the hinge of great revolutions, even if all were done that

1 Being subdued.

2 Civilization.

3 Eve.

is said to have been done, form no example. If they have any effect in argument, they make an exception to prove the rule. None of your own liberties could stand a moment if the casual deviations from them at such times were suffered to be used as proofs of their nullity. 5 By the lucrative amount of such casual breaches in the Constitution, judge what the stated and fixed rule of supply has been in that kingdom. Your Irish pensioners would starve if they had no other fund to live on than taxes granted by English authority. Turn your eyes to 10 those popular grants from whence all your great supplies are come, and learn to respect that only source of public wealth in the British Empire.

My next example is Wales. This country was said to be reduced by Henry the Third. It was said more 15 truly to be so by Edward the First. But though then conquered, it was not looked upon as any part of the realm of England. Its old constitution, whatever that might have been, was destroyed, and no good one was substituted in its place. The care of that tract1 was put 20 into the hands of Lords Marchers, a form of government of a very singular kind, a strange, heterogeneous monster, something between hostility and government: perhaps it has a sort of resemblance, according to the modes 2 of those times, to that of commander-in-chief at 25 present, to whom all civil power is granted as secondary. The manners of the Welsh nation followed the genius

1 Region.

2 Usages.

of the government: the people were ferocious, restive, savage, and uncultivated, sometimes composed,1 never pacified. Wales, within itself, was in perpetual disorder, and it kept the frontier of England in perpetual alarm. 5 Benefits from it to the state there were none. Wales was only known to England by incursion and invasion.

Sir, during that state of things Parliament was not idle. They attempted to subdue the fierce spirit of the Welsh by all sorts of rigorous laws. They prohibited by statute 10 the sending all sorts of arms into Wales, as you prohibit by proclamation (with something more of doubt on the legality) the sending arms to America. They disarmed the Welsh by statute, as you attempted (but still with more question on the legality) to disarm New England 15 by an instruction. They made an act to drag offenders from Wales into England for trial, as you have done (but with more hardship) with regard to America. By another act, where one of the parties was an Englishman, they ordained that his trial should be always by English. 20 They made acts to restrain trade, as you do; and they prevented the Welsh from the use of fairs and markets, as you do the Americans from fisheries and foreign ports. In short, when the statute-book was not quite so much swelled as it is now, you find no less than fifteen acts 25 of penal regulation on the subject of Wales.

Here we rub our hands — A fine body of precedents for the authority of Parliament and the use of it!—I admit it fully; and pray add likewise to these precedents, 1 Quieted.

that all the while Wales rid this kingdom like an incubus; that it was an unprofitable and oppressive burden; and that an Englishman travelling in that country could not go six yards from the high-road without being murdered.

The march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it was 5 not until after two hundred years discovered that by an eternal law Providence had decreed vexation to violence, and poverty to rapine. Your ancestors did, however, at length open their eyes to the ill-husbandry of injustice. They found that the tyranny of a free people could of all 10 tyrannies the least be endured, and that laws made against an whole nation were not the most effectual methods for securing its obedience. Accordingly, in the twenty-seventh year of Henry the Eighth, the course was entirely altered. With a preamble stating the entire and 15 perfect rights of the crown of England, it gave to the Welsh all the rights and privileges of English subjects. A political order was established; the military power gave way to the civil; the marches were turned into counties. But that a nation should have a right to English liberties, 20 and yet no share at all in the fundamental security of these liberties, the grant of their own property, seemed a thing so incongruous that eight years after, that is, in the thirty-fifth of that reign, a complete and not ill-proportioned representation by counties and 25 boroughs was bestowed upon Wales by act of Parliament. From that moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided; obedience was restored; peace, order and civilization followed in the train of liberty. When the day-star of the

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