udal knighthood, the roots of our primitive Constitution, were early
transplanted into that soil, and grew and flourished there. Magna
Charta, if it did not give us originally the House of Commons, gave us
at least an 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 immediately 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 liberty 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 years in subduing; 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 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 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, 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 our strength and ornament. This country cannot
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 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. By the lucrative amount of such casual breaches in
the Constitution, judge what the stated and fixed rule of supply has
been in th