Page:Home rule; Fenian home rule; Home rule all round; Devolution; what do they mean?.djvu/25

21 15th February, 1782, asserted—"That the claim of any body of men other than the King, Lords and Commons of Ireland to make laws to bind the Kingdom is unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance." A week afterwards Grattan moved and carried an address to the King in the Irish House of Commons founded on these resolutions—"That the people of Ireland were a free people. The Crown of Ireland, an Imperial Crown, and the Kingdom of Ireland, a distinct Kingdom with a Parliament of its own, the sole legislature thereof: that by these fundamental laws and franchises, the subjects of this separate Kingdom could not be bound affected or obliged by any Legislature save only by the King, Lords, and Commons of His Majesty's realm of Ireland: nor was there any other body of men who had power to make laws for them: that in this privilege was contained the very essence of their liberty."

The Irish Parliament left no doubt as to the precise conditions of the Irish demand for legislative independence. They were as follows, and were carried into effect by subsequent legislation in 1782:—

1. Repeal of the Irish Perpetual Mutiny Bill, and dependency of the Irish Army upon the Irish Parliament.

2. The abrogation of the claim of England to make laws for Ireland.

3. Exclusion of the English House of Peers and English Court of King's Bench from any judicial authority in Ireland.

4. The restoration of the Irish Peers to their final judicature.