Page:The Irish Parliament; what it was, and what it did.djvu/14

 Irish Constitution, in the words of Fox, speaking in the English House of Commons, "a mirror in which the abuses of the English Constitution are strongly reflected;" or, to use the words of Mr. Forbes, in the Irish House of Commons, " a system which tended to adopt all the defects of the British Constitution, and rejected all its excellences and advantages." "I allow," said Grattan, "the British Constitution the best, and I arraign this model as the worst because practically and essentially the opposite of that British Constitution."

The great differences between the Irish and the British Constitutions did not escape the observation of Edmund Burke. Writing to Sir Hercules Langrishe, a distinguished member of the Irish House of Commons, he observes, "The Revolution operated differently in England and Ireland in many and essential particulars. Supposing the principles to have been altogether the same in both kingdoms, by the application of those principles to very different objects, the whole spirit of the system was changed, not to say reversed. In England it was the struggle of the great body of the people for the establishment of their liberties against the efforts of a very small faction who would have oppressed them. In Ireland it was the establishment of the power of