George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

[75] Commons. When¹ in 1719 the Irish House of Lords

chap. IV.} 1763.

denied for Ireland the judicial power of the House of Lords of Great Britain, the British parliament, making a precedent for all its outlying dominions, enacted, that ‘the king, with the consent of the parliament of Great Britain, had, hath, and of right ought to have full power and authority to make laws and statutes of force to bind the people and the kingdom of Ireland!’²

But the opposite opinion was confirmed among the Anglo-Irish statesmen. The Irish people set the example of resisting English laws by voluntary agreements to abstain from using English manufactures,³ and the patriot party had already acquired strength and skill, just at the time when the British parliament, by its purpose of taxing the American colonies, provoked their united population to raise the same questions, and in their turn to deny its power.

But besides the conforming Protestant population, there was in Ireland another class of Protestants who shared in some degree the disqualifications of the Catholics. To Queen Anne's bill for preventing the further growth of Popery,⁴ a clause was added in England,⁵ and ratified by the Irish parliament, that none should be capable of any public employment, or of being in the magistracy of any city, who did not receive the sacrament according to the English test act;⁶ thus disfranchising the whole body of Presbyterians.