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 engagements.  They did not, therefore, call it a perfecting of the security, but an additional security, which it could not have been, if the first had been void; for the Parliament could not bind itself more than the crown had bound itself.  And if all had made but one security, neither of them could be called additional with propriety or common sense.  But let us suppose that they did apprehend there might have been something wanting in this security without the sanction of Parliament.  They were, however, evidently mistaken; and this surplusage of theirs did not weaken the validity of the single contract, upon the known principle of law, Non solent, quae abundant, vitiare scripturas.  For nothing is more evident than that the crown was bound, and that no act can be made without the royal assent.  But the Constitution will warrant us in going a great deal further, and in affirming, that a treaty executed by the crown, and contradictory of no preceding law, is full as binding on the whole body of the nation as if it had twenty times received the sanction of Parliament; because the very same Constitution which has given to the Houses of Parliament their definite authority has also left in the crown the trust of making peace, as a consequence, and much the best consequence, of the prerogative of making war.  If the peace was ill made, my Lord Galmoy, Coningsby, and Porter, who signed it, were responsible; because they were subject to the community.  But its own contracts are not subject to it:  it is subject to them; and the compact of the king acting constitutionally was the compact of the nation.