radation to which his foreign policy and that of
his brother had caused his country to fall.

FOOTNOTES:

[122:1] In Kennet's _Register_, 189.

[122:2] Lamont's _Diary_, 159.

[127:1] Scobell's _Collection of Acts_, II. 8.

CHAPTER VI.

BOOK-FIRES OF THE REVOLUTION.

The period of the Revolution, by which I mean from the accession
of William III. to the death of Queen Anne, was a time in which
the conflict between Orthodoxy and Free Thought, and again
between Church and Dissent, continued with an unabated ferocity,
which is most clearly reflected in and illustrated by the
sensational history of its contemporary literature, especially
during the reign of Queen Anne. I am not aware that any book was
burnt by authority of the English Parliament during the reign of
William, but to say this in the face of Molyneux's _Case for
Ireland_, which has been so frequently by great authorities
declared to have been so treated, compels me to allude to the
history of that book, and to give the reasons for a contrary
belief.

It is first stated in the preface to the edition of 1770 that
William Molyneux's _Case for Ireland being bound by Acts of
Parliament in England_, first published in 1698, was burnt by the
hangman at the order of Parliament; and the statement has been
often repeated by later writers, as by Mr. Lecky, Dr. Ball, and
others. Why then is there no mention of such a sentence in the
Journals of the Commons, where a full account is given of the
proceedings against the book; nor in Swift's _Drapier Letters_,
where he refers to the fate of the _Case for Ireland_? This seems
almost conclusive evidence on the negative side; but as the
editor of 1770 may have had some lost authority for his remark,
and not been merely mistaken, some account may be given of the
book, as of one possibly, but not probably, condemned to the
flames.[137:1]

Molyneux was distinguished for his scientific attainments, was a
member of the Irish Parliament, first for Dublin City and then
for the University, and was also a great friend of Locke the
philosopher. The introduction in 1698 of the Bill, which was
carried the same year by the English Parliament, forbidding the
exportation of Irish woollen manufactures to England or
elsewhere--one of the worst Acts of oppression of the many that
England has perpetrated against Ireland--led Molyneux to write
this book, in which he contends for the constitutional right of
Ireland to absolu