in Connemara, and a Bruges in the Bog of Allen. And what right
had strangers to interfere? Not content with showing that the law
of which he complained was absurd and unjust, he undertook to
prove that it was null and void. Early in the year 1698 he
published and dedicated to the King a treatise in which it was
asserted in plain terms that the English Parliament had no
authority over Ireland.

Whoever considers without passion or prejudice the great
constitutional question which was thus for the first time raised
will probably be of opinion that Molyneux was in error. The right
of the Parliament of England to legislate for Ireland rested on
the broad general principle that the paramount authority of the
mother country extends over all colonies planted by her sons in
all parts of the world. This principle was the subject of much
discussion at the time of the American troubles, and was then
maintained, without any reservation, not only by the English
Ministers, but by Burke and all the adherents of Rockingham, and
was admitted, with one single reservation, even by the Americans
themselves. Down to the moment of separation the Congress fully
acknowledged the competency of the King, Lords and Commons to
make laws, of any kind but one, for Massachusetts and Virginia.
The only power which such men as Washington and Franklin denied
to the Imperial legislature was the power of taxing. Within
living memory, Acts which have made great political and social
revolutions in our Colonies have been passed in this country; nor
has the validity of those Acts ever been questioned; and
conspicuous among them were the law of 1807 which abolished the
slave trade, and the law of 1833 which abolished slavery.