The feudal baronage and
the feudal knighthood, the roots of our primitive Constitution, were early
transplanted into that soil, and grew and flourished there. Magna Charta, if it
did not give us originally the House of Commons, gave us at least a House of
Commons of weight and consequence. But your ancestors did not churlishly sit
down alone to the feast of Magna Charta. Ireland was made immediately a
partaker. This benefit of English laws and liberties, I confess, was not at
first extended to all Ireland. Mark the consequence. English authority and
English liberties had exactly the same boundaries. Your standard could never be
advanced an inch before your privileges. Sir John Davis shows beyond a doubt
that the refusal of a general communication of these rights was the true cause
why Ireland was five hundred years in subduing; and after the vain projects of a
military government, attempted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it was soon
discovered that nothing could make that country English, in civility and
allegiance, but your laws and your forms of legislature. It was not English
arms, but the English Constitution, that conquered Ireland.
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