with a host of minor transactions and enactments, which must all be
regarded as, more or less, so many changes in or developments of the
constitution, as it was regarded and understood by the statesmen of the
seventeenth century.

It has seemed, therefore, to the compiler of this volume, that a
narrative of these transactions in their historical sequence, so as to
exhibit the connection which has frequently existed between them; to
show, for instance, how the repeal of Poynings' Act, and the Regency
Bill of 1788, necessitated the Irish Union; how Catholic Emancipation
brought after it Parliamentary Reform, and how that led to municipal and
ecclesiastical reforms, might not be without interest and use at the
present time. And the modern fulness of our parliamentary reports
(itself one not unimportant reform and novelty), since the accession of
George III., has enabled him to give the inducements or the objections
to the different enactments in the very words of the legislators who
proposed them or resisted them, as often as it seemed desirable to do
so.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.

Mr. Hallam's View of the Development of the Constitution.--Symptoms of
approaching Constitutional Changes.--State of the Kingdom at the
Accession of George III.--Improvement of the Law affecting the