Page:The Irish Parliament; what it was, and what it did.djvu/42

 or decree given or made in any Court within the said kingdom, and that all proceedings before the said House of Lords upon any such judgment, sentence, or decree are utterly null and void." Blackstone, too, in his Commentaries, lays it down as incontrovertible that Acts of the English Parliament extended into Ireland if it were specially named or included under such general words as "within any of the king's dominions."

The Irish Parliament, while admitting the dependence of the Irish on the English Crown, repelled .without qualification the theory of the subordination of the Irish to the English legislature. The address to the Crown moved in the House of Commons by Grattan on the 16th April, 1782, may be regarded as an authoritative declaration of Ireland's constitutional position, " To assure his Majesty that his subjects of Ireland are a free people, that the Crown of Ireland is an imperial Crown inseparably annexed to the Crown of Great Britain, on which connection the interests and happiness of both nations essentially depend; but that the kingdom of Ireland is a distinct kingdom with a Parliament of her own, the sole legislature thereof; that there is no body of men competent to make laws to bind this nation except the King, Lords and Commons of Ireland, nor any other Parliament which