Molyneux soon found that he had ventured on a perilous undertaking.  A member of the English House of Commons complained in his place that a book which attacked the most precious privileges of the supreme legislature was in circulation.  The volume was produced; some passages were read; and a Committee was appointed to consider the whole subject.  The Committee soon reported that the obnoxious pamphlet was only one of several symptoms which indicated a spirit such as ought to be suppressed.  The Crown of Ireland had been most improperly described in public instruments as an imperial Crown.  The Irish Lords and Commons had presumed, not only to reenact an English Act passed expressly for the purpose of binding them, but to reenact it with alterations.  The alterations were indeed small; but the alteration even of a letter was tantamount to a declaration of independence.  Several addresses were voted without a division.  The King was entreated to discourage all encroachments of subordinate powers on the supreme authority of the English legislature, to bring to justice the pamphleteer who had dared to question that authority, to enforce the Acts which had been passed for the protection of the woollen manufactures of England, and to direct the industry and capital of Ireland into the channel of the linen trade, a trade which might grow and flourish in Leinster and Ulster without exciting the smallest jealousy at Norwich or at Halifax.

The King promised to do what the Commons asked; but in truth there was little to be done.  The Irish, conscious of their impotence, submitted without a murmur.  The Irish woollen manufacture languished and disappeared, as it would, in all probability, have languished and disappeared if it had been left to itself.  Had Molyneux lived a few months longer he would probably have been impeached.  But the close of the session was approaching; and before the Houses met again a timely death had snatched him from their vengeance; and the momentous question which had been first stirred by him slept a deep sleep till it was revived in a more formidable shape, after the lapse of twenty-six years, by the fourth letter of The Drapier.

Of the commercial questions which prolonged this session far into the summer the most important respected India.  Four years had elapsed since the House of Commons had decided that all Englishmen had an equal right to traffic in the Asiatic Seas, unless prohibited by Parliament; and in that decision the King had thought it prudent to acquiesce.  Any merchant of London or Bristol might now fit out a ship for Bengal or for China, without the least apprehension of being molested by the Admiralty or sued in the Courts of Westminster.  No wise man, however, was disposed to stake a large sum on such a venture.  For the vote which protected him from annoyance here left him exposed to serious risks on the other side of the Cape of Good Hope.  The Old Company, though its exclusive privileges were no more, and though