om 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 flourish in Leinster and Ulster without
exciting the smallest jealousy 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