Page:Home rule; Fenian home rule; Home rule all round; Devolution; what do they mean?.djvu/14

10 Subordinate legislative assemblies have an innate tendency to achieve ultimately practical or actual independence. The history of the Irish Subordinate Parliament is an example of this rule. The position of almost complete independence gradually gained by our Colonial legislatures further illustrates it. It is demonstrable that if a subordinate Parliament is granted to Ireland it will repeat Irish history and rapidly achieve complete independence.

The Irish Parliament and Executive in the early part of the eighteenth century was completely subordinated to the British Parliament and Executive. The English House of Lords and Court of King's Bench claimed judicial jurisdiction over the Irish Courts. The British Parliament claimed absolute domination over the Irish Parliament, though the Irish Parliament never admitted the right of the English Parliament to make laws for Ireland. By the Declaratory Act of 6th George I. the English Parliament asserted the absolute right of legislating for Ireland. It was, as Lecky points out, "a case precisely parallel with the Declaratory Act relating to America which was passed by the British Parliament when the American Stamp Act was repealed. In both cases the right was denied, but in both cases the great majority of politicians were practically ready to acquiesce provided certain limitations and restrictions were secured to them. The Americans did not dispute the power of the English Legislature to bind their commerce and regulate their affairs as members of an