s
unquestionably broken. In Ireland such a breach on the part of the crown
was much more unpardonable in administration than it would have been
here. They have in Ireland a way of preventing any bill even from
approaching the royal presence, in matters of far less importance than
the honor and faith of the crown and the well-being of a great body of
the people. For, besides that they might have opposed the very first
suggestion of it in the House of Commons, it could not be framed into a
bill without the approbation of the Council in Ireland. It could not be
returned to them again without the approbation of the King and Council
here. They might have met it again in its second passage through that
House of Parliament in which it was originally suggested, as well as in
the other. If it had escaped them through all these mazes, it was again
to come before the Lord Lieutenant, who might have sunk it by a refusal
of the royal assent. The Constitution of Ireland has interposed all
those checks to the passing of any constitutional act, however
insignificant in its own nature. But did the administration in that
reign avail themselves of any one of those opportunities? They never
gave the act of the eleventh of Queen Anne the least degree of
opposition in any one stage of its progress. What is rather the fact,
many of the queen's servants encouraged it, recommended it, were in
reality the true authors of its passing in Parliament, instead of
recommending and using their utmost endeavor to establish a law directly
opposite in its tendency, as they were bound to do by the express letter
of the very first article of the Treaty of Limerick. To say nothing
further of the ministry, who in this instance most shamefully betrayed
the faith of government, may it not be a matter of some degree of doubt,
whether the Parliament, who do not claim a right of dissolving the force
of moral obligation, did not make themselves a party in this breach of
contract, by presenting a bill to the crown in direct violation of those
articles so solemnly and so recently executed, which by the
Constitution they had full authority to execute?

It may be further objected, that, when the Irish requested the
ratification of Parliament to those articles, they did, in effect,
themselves entertain a doubt concerning their validity without such a
ratification. To this I answer, that the collateral security was meant
to bind the crown, and to hold it firm to its enga