all the contracting parties, meant only that the Roman Catholic worship should be tolerated as in time past.  That article was drawn up by Ginkell; and, just before he drew it up, he had declared that he would rather try the chance of arms than consent that Irish Papists should be capable of holding civil and military offices, of exercising liberal professions, and of becoming members of municipal corporations.  How is it possible to believe that he would, of his own accord, have promised that the House of Lords and the House of Commons should be open to men to whom he would not open a guild of skinners or a guild of cordwainers?  How, again, is it possible to believe that the English Peers would, while professing the most punctilious respect for public faith, while lecturing the Commons on the duty of observing public faith, while taking counsel with the most learned and upright jurist of the age as to the best mode of maintaining public faith, have committed a flagrant violation of public faith and that not a single lord should have been so honest or so factious as to protest against an act of monstrous perfidy aggravated by hypocrisy?  Or, if we could believe this, how can we believe that no voice would have been raised in any part of the world against such wickedness; that the Court of Saint Germains and the Court of Versailles would have remained profoundly silent; that no Irish exile, no English malecontent, would have uttered a murmur; that not a word of invective or sarcasm on so inviting a subject would have been found in the whole compass of the Jacobite literature; and that it would have been reserved for politicians of the nineteenth century to discover that a treaty made in the seventeenth century had, a few weeks after it had been signed, been outrageously violated in the sight of all Europe?152

On the same day on which the Commons read for the first time the bill which subjected Ireland to the absolute dominion of the Protestant minority, they took into consideration another matter of high importance.  Throughout the country, but especially in the capital, in the seaports and in the manufacturing towns, the minds of men were greatly excited on the subject of the trade with the East Indies; a fierce paper war had during some time been raging; and several grave questions, both constitutional and commercial, had been raised, which the legislature only could decide.

It has often been repeated, and ought never to be forgotten, that our polity differs widely from those politics which have, during the last eighty years, been methodically constructed, digested into articles, and ratified by constituent assemblies.  It grew up in a rude age.  It is not to be found entire in any formal instrument.  All along the line which separates the functions of the prince from those of the legislator there was long a disputed territory.  Encroachments were perpetually committed, and, if not very outrageous, were often tolerated.  Trespass, merely as trespass, was commonly suffered to pass unresented.  It was only when the trespass produced some positive damage that the aggrieved party stood on his right, and demanded that the frontier should be set out by metes and bounds, and that the landmarks should thenceforward be punctiliously respected.