: V. CHAP. land, that very little alteration is obfervable; and fo many of the latter have been adopted, that from memory I can only recollect one which has been omitted; namely, an order by which printing the works of peers without their consent is declared a breach of privilege. This order, it is faid, was adopted in one thousand feven hundred and twentyone, in favour of Sheffield duke of Buckinghamshire*. I could wish it were adopted, as it might be an introduction to the fame fyftem of literary protection in Ireland, which prevails in England. If there be any property in which men have the most decided right, it is in the production of their own understandings: literary piracy is most difgraceful, and the pillage of the writings of other men prevents our own exertions." On both the above trials all the lords were fummoned, though till 1773 a peer might have been tried by a jury of twenty-three peers, in the high steward's court, as was the cafe in England before the Revolution; but in 1773 the law of king William was adopted, by which peers are now to be tried in Ireland as they are in England. * Johnson's Life of Pope; Lives of the Poets, vol. iv. p. 91. As V. As one not the leaft laborious, if not the CHAP. moft brilliant of noble authors, I cannot help wishing for a law in Ireland to protect literary property * * In the foregoing statement, that parliament which was held by King James the second in 1689-90, has been purposely omitted. The first act of this parliament, the proceedings of which are not recorded in the Journals, was the entire repeal of Poyning's law, by which the king gave his confent to acts without the advice of the English privy council: from this circumftance, with others, that parliament was confidered to be illegally con vened. I have obferved, in a curious tract upon the proceedings of this pretended parliament, one act among others to prohibit the importation of coals from England, and stating the great loss farmers in the neighbourhood must sustain, by not supplying Dublin with peat, or turf as it is called, and wood, for fuel. To the curious it may probably be acceptable to record one odd remnant of this parliament within my own memory, viz. that the robes used by king James the second were worn by the Irish viceroys till the ad. ministration of the earl of Buckinghamshire in 1777, when new robes were fubftituted in their place by order of his majesty. APPENDIX. N° I. Lord MOUNTMORRES's SPEECH relative to rehearing Caufes. T [Referred to in vol. i. p. 155.] HE fixtieth ftanding order about rehearing causes being read, as follows: "No petition which relates to the rehearing "of any cause, or part of a caufe, formerly "heard in this houfe, fhall be read the fame day it is offered; but fhall lie upon the table, "and a future day be appointed for reading thereof, after twelve of the clock." The cafe of Magrath verfus lord Muskerry having been decided in favour of the latter, upon a close divifion of five to four, three weeks before, lord Perry contended, that under this order the cause cause might be reheard; upon which the author made the following reply: "WERE I, my lords, to confult my own inclination, I would certainly remain filent upon the present important and arduous queftion. I fhould be forry, however, were any information. which I may accidentally poffefs, loft by my filence; it is, however, but too true, that though I enter once more into the fervice of this house with the fame ardour as before, yet neither my voice nor ftrength are calculated to answer laborious difquifitions; an enfeebled body but ill obeys the efforts of an active and laborious mind*. "It were to be wished, my lords, that the learned viscount had applied his ufual induftry to the conftruction of the fixtieth ftanding order, before he had pronounced that it juftified, or even countenanced the doctrine of rehearing a cause already decided in this houfe. I pay due regard to the public atteftation; I pay due attention to his late fituation in this country, in which poffibly no man has ever acted with more dignity, or in more difficult times; but I confine myself to the prefent queftion, without any reference to what is past. It is, generally speaking, This paffage alludes to the fpeaker having been wounded in an affair of honour relative to the univerfity of Dublin. by |