pestilential morass of Dundalk. It was owing to the exertions and
sacrifices of the English people that, from 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