Page:The Irish Parliament; what it was, and what it did.djvu/43

 hath any authority or power of any sort whatever in this country save only the Parliament of Ireland;" "To assure his Majesty that we have seen with concern certain claims advanced by the Parliament of Great Britain in an Act entitled an Act for the better securing the dependency of Ireland; an Act containing matter entirely irreconcilable to the fundamental rights of this nation. That we consider this Act and the claims it advances to be the great and principal cause of the discontents and jealousies in this Kingdom."

Lord Chief Justice Whiteside, commenting on the Act of 6 Geo. I., coincides with the opinions advanced in Grattan's address. "This statute was," he writes, "a complete assertion of authority over the legislature and kingdom of Ireland, and a practical denial of its Parliamentary independence." "It furnishes a decisive proof that whether the Tudor or the Stuart or the Guelph reigned, it was equally the policy of England not to permit the existence of an independent Parliament in Ireland."

The Act of the 6th George I. was repealed in 1782 by the British Parliament. The mere repeal of this statute did not satisfy Mr. Flood, who contended that there should be a complete and absolute renunciation by the English Parliament of all claims to legislate for Ireland.