ncrease
of shipping and navigation_, which purported to throw open to
Ireland a free and immediate trade with all our plantations and
colonies; to promote ship-building, by remitting to the owners of
Irish-built vessels large proportions of the duties of custom and
excise, encourage seamen by exempting them for ten years from
taxes, and allowing them the freedom of any city or seaport they
should chuse to reside in, and improve the Irish navy by
establishing free schools for teaching and instructing in the
mathematics and the art of navigation, in Dublin, Belfast,
Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Galway. If James looked up to any
probability of maintaining his ground in Ireland he must have been
sensible of the necessity of an Irish navy. No man was better
qualified to judge of the utility of such institutions than this
prince. He was an able seaman, fond of his profession; and to his
industry and talent does the British navy owe many of its best
signals and regulations. The firmness, resolution and enterprise
which had distinguished him, whilst Duke of York, as a sea officer,
abandoned him when king, both in the cabinet and the field."

Thus, then, this Parliament exercised less severity than any of its
time; it established liberty of conscience and equality of creeds; it
proscribed no man for his religion--the word Protestant does not occur
in any Act--(though, while it sat, the Westminster Convention was not
only thundering out insults against "popery," but exciting William to
persecute it, and laying the foundation of the penal code); it
introduced many laws of great practical value in the business of
society; it removed the disabilities of the natives, the scars of old
fetters; it was generous to the king, yet carried its own opinions out
against his where they differed; it, finally--and what should win the
remembrance and veneration of Irishmen through all time--it boldly
announced our national independence, in words which Molyneux shouted on
to Swift, and Swift to Lucas, and Lucas to Flood, and Flood and Grattan
redoubling the cry; Dungannon church rang, and Ireland was again a
nation. Yet something it said escaped the hearing or surpassed the
vigour of the last century; it said, "Irish commerce fostered," and it
was faintly heard, but it said, "an Irish navy to shield our coasts,"
and it said, "an Irish army to scathe the invaders," and Gratta