mes
of Petrie, of Wilde, of Todd, of Graves, and, last but not least, of
Miss Margaret Stokes spring to the mind. Irish geologists, with Sir
Richard Griffiths at their head, show as good a record as those of any
other country, but the number of Irish naturalists whose fame has
reached beyond a very narrow area is small indeed. This is the less
accountable as, though scanty as regards the number of its species, the
natural history of Ireland is full of interest, abounding in problems
not even yet fully solved: the very scantiness of its fauna being in one
sense, an incentive and stimulus to its study, for the same reason that
a language which is on the point of dying out is often of more interest
to a philologist than one that is in full life and vigour.

This, however, is a digression, and as such must be forgiven. Returning
to the arena of politics, Molyneux's chief claim to remembrance rests
upon a work published by him in favour of the rights of the Irish
Parliament in the last year but one of the seventeenth century, only
seven years therefore after the treaty of Limerick.

As one of the members of the Dublin University he had every opportunity
of judging how the grasp which the English Parliament maintained by
means of the obsolete machinery of Poynings' Act was steadily throttling
and benumbing all Irish enterprise. In 1698 his famous remonstrance,
known as "The Case of Ireland being bound by Act of Parliament made in
England," appeared, with a dedication to King William. It at once
created an immense sensation, was fiercely condemned as seditious and
libellous by the English Parliament, by whom, as a mark of its utter
abhorrence, it was condemned to be burned by the common hangman.

Few things will give a clearer idea of the extraordinarily exasperated
state of politics at the time than to read the remonstrance which
produced so tremendous a storm. Take, for example, the words with which
the earlier portion of it closes, and which are worth studying, if only
for the impressive dignity of their style, which not a little
foreshadows Burke's majestic prose:--

"To conclude, I think it highly inconvenient for England to assume this
authority over the kingdom of Ireland, I believe there will need no
great arguments to convince the wise assembly of English senators how
inconvenient it may be to England to do that which may make the lords
and the people of Ireland think that they are not well used, and may
drive the