of the people; and, that being the case, that its voice was of no authority.  It is evident that all arguments founded on a denial of the omnipotence of a Parliament, whether English or Irish, are invalid.  The question of that omnipotence, as has been seen in a former chapter, had been fully discussed when Mr. Pitt’s father denied the power of Parliament to tax the American Colonies; and that question may fairly be regarded as having been settled at that time.  It is equally clear that the denial that, on any question whatever, the House of Commons must be taken to speak the sentiments of the constituencies, whether the proposal of such question had been contemplated at the time of their election or not, is the advancement of a doctrine wholly inconsistent with our parliamentary constitution, and one which would practically be the parent of endless agitation and mischief.  To expect that the members could pronounce on no new question without a fresh reference to their constituents, would be to reduce them from the position of representatives to that of delegates; such as that of the members of the old States-general, in France, whose early decay is attributed by the ablest political writers in no small degree to the dependence of the members on their constituents for precise instructions.  Another argument on which Mr. Grey insisted with great earnestness is worth preserving, though subsequent inventions have destroyed its force; he contended that the example of the Scotch Union did not, when properly considered, afford any argument in favor of an Irish Union, from the difference of situation of the two countries.  Scotland was a part of the same island as England; “there was no physical impediment to rapid and constant communication; the relative situation of the two countries was such that the King himself could administer the executive government in both, and there was no occasion for a separate establishment being kept up in each.”  But the sea lay between England and Ireland, and the delays and sometimes difficulties which were thus interposed rendered it “necessary that Ireland should have a separate government;” and he affirmed that “this was an insuperable bar to a beneficial Union,” quoting a saying of Lord Somers, that “if it were necessary to preserve a separate executive government at Edinburgh after the Union, he would abandon the measure.”  Mr. Grey even denied that the prosperity of Scotland since the Union was mainly attributable to that measure.  “It was not the Union; it was the adoption of a liberal policy, the application of a proper remedy to the particular evils under which the country labored, that removed the causes which had impeded the prosperity of Scotland.”  But this argument was clearly open to the reply that the adoption of that liberal policy had been a direct effect of the Union, and would have been impracticable without it, and was, therefore, a strong inducement to the adoption of a similar Union with Ireland, where the existing evils