In the tenth Year of this Reign, the Parliamentary Constitution of _Ireland_ received a deeper Stab than had ever before, or since, been inflicted thereon, by a Statute Law, commonly called _Poynin_’s Act; by which a new, and, till that wretched Period, an unheard of Order, was added to the three established Ranks of the State. By this Law, the _English_ Privy-Council may impose a _Negative_ on the _free_ and _unanimous_ Parliamentary Ordinances of the representative Body of the Kingdom of _Ireland_; a manifest Injury to the Authority and Dignity of Parliament; and an equal Diminution of the Royal Prerogative, that only should include, and should alone exert, a Power so important. In Times dark, tumultuated and dangerous, no Wonder extraordinary Laws should pass: _Desperate Diseases_ require _desperate Remedies_: But when the _Fever_ is removed, it certainly is a horrid Management to leave the blistering Plaister _still sticking_ to the _recovered_ Patient’s Back. The Distempers of this Nation were heavy, complicated and chronic; and finally curable, only by the salutary all-healing Hands of our present King, and present Parliament. To _Henry_ the Seventh succeeded _Henry_ the Eighth, as consummate a Tyrant, in every Sense, as ever swayed the _British_, or any other Sceptre; whose whole Life was so continued a Scene of wanton Dissipation, Lust, Cruelty, Rapine, Bloodshed and Sacrilege, that it must have been a peculiar Happiness, to any Part of his Dominions, to have been _neglected_ or _forgotten_ by him: Nor could the two succeeding Reigns of _Edward_ the Sixth, and Queen _Mary_, short, various, cloudy, and vastly agitated on the Score of Religion, (which, in those two Reigns, took Faces almost diametrically opposite,) afford this Kingdom much reflected Sunshine. To those ensued that of Queen _Elizabeth_, a Princess of powerful Abilities, who, truly intent on the Peace and Welfare of her Subjects, caused her Laws to operate, and Justice to circulate in this Kingdom, abandoned, as hath been observed, to a State almost of Anarchy, thro’ a dismal Series of seventeen Reigns: But the Reformation in Religion, which she established in _England_, and introduced in _Ireland_, much obviated her Purposes for the latter Kingdom: For, the _Irish_, more tenacious of their Altars, than of their Fire-places, could not easily reconcile themselves to the Exchange of a Religion they deemed a _new one_, for _that_ they had been in Possession of from the fourth, to the fifteenth Century: Which produced a rebellious Defection, in a few of the principal Chieftains of this Land, and gave Occasion to the greedy Provincial Precedents, of trumping up _imaginary Rebellions_, to pave the Way to _real Forfeitures_; thereby to aggrandize their own Houses; what some of them effectually accomplished, to the Ruin and Extirpation of many honest Families.