and find favor in the eyes of the Castle authorities. It is not surprising, then, that a body composed of such elements should have unhesitatingly voted away the royalty of the ancient kingdom to Henry VIII., whose predecessors never claimed a higher title than that of lord; that at the bidding of the same monster, it officially and almost unanimously declared for the Reformation, and with equal alacrity, in the reign of his daughter Mary, explicitly repudiated everything it had done a few years previously. Yet it still bore the semblance of a national legislature; and, gradually yielding to the influence of a growing public opinion, some good men, Catholics as well as Protestants, were again to be found among its members in the subsequent reigns, until that of William III., when, by an unconstitutional law of the English Parliament, the former were for ever excluded, and never during its existence was one of that proscribed faith allowed to sit on its benches. From this reign also may be dated the many cruel penal enactments, over one hundred in number, which disgraced its statute‐books; though, to do its members justice, they never went so far in ferocity and ingenuity as did their brethren of London at the same period and even long previously. But though four‐fifths of the people were disfranchised and their co‐ religionists denied a seat in the Parliament, that body was again gradually approaching the assertion of its right of self‐legislation. A new generation had sprung up during the later half of the XVIIIth century who knew not William of Orange nor the bitter anti‐Irish prejudices that characterized his followers. The bold, incisive, and satirical writings of Swift, the learned disquisitions of Molyneux, and the homely but vigorous appeals of Lucas, had not been without their effect on the young students of Trinity and other colleges, fresh from the study of the lessons of human liberty so frequently found in classic lore; and the consequence was that when they entered the Parliament as members, confident in their position as gentlemen of fortune, and self‐reliant, not only from their aristocratic connections, but from their innate sense of mental superiority, language began to be heard and applauded which, for elegance, grace, and manliness, had never been equalled in that hall before. The outbreak of our Revolution, the broad principles of justice and humanity laid down in the speeches and writings of our ancestors, and the trumpet‐ toned Declaration of Independence occurring at the same time, gave an impetus and a clarity of ideas on questions of government which, up to that time, had assumed neither form nor consistency.