day to dispute. If any evils arise from it, let
us not strip it of what may be useful in it. By taking the English Privy
Council into your legislature, you obtain a new, a further, and possibly
a more liberal consideration of all your acts. If a local legislature
shall by oblique means tend to deprive any of the people of this
benefit, and shall make it penal to them to follow into England the laws
which may affect them, then the English Privy Council will have to
decide upon your acts without those lights that may enable them to judge
upon what grounds you made them, or how far they ought to be modified,
received, or rejected.

To what end is the ultimate appeal in judicature lodged in this kingdom,
if men may be disabled from following their suits here, and may be taxed
into an absolute _denied of justice_? You observe, my dear Sir, that I
do not assert that in all cases two shillings will necessarily cut off
this means of correcting legislative and judicial mistakes, and thus
amount to a denial of justice. I might, indeed, state cases in which
this very quantum of tax would be fully sufficient to defeat this right.
But I argue not on the case, but on the principle, and I am sure the
principle implies it. They who may restrain may prohibit; they who may
impose two shillings may impose ten shillings in the pound; and those
who may condition the tax to six months' annual absence may carry that
condition to six weeks, or even to six days, and thereby totally defeat
the wise means which have been provided for extensive and impartial
justice, and for orderly, well-poised, and well-connected government.

What is taxing the resort to and residence in any place, but declaring
that your connection with that place is a grievance? Is not such an
Irish tax as is now proposed a virtual declaration that England is a
foreign country, and a renunciation on your part of the principle of
_common naturalization_, which runs through this whole empire?

Do you, or does any Irish gentleman, think it a mean privilege, that,
the moment he sets his foot upon this ground, he is to all intents and
purposes an Englishman? You will not be pleased with a law which by its
operation tends to disqualify you from a seat in this Parliament; and if
your own virtue or fortune, or if that of your children, should carry
you or them to it, should you like to be excluded from the possibility
of a peerage in this kingdom? If in Ireland we lay it down as a m