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their rights should be acknowledged by the English Parliament. Mr. Courtney, from well-meant but mistaken pride, considered the suggestion of Lord Beauchamp, rather as tending to sanction the usurped claim of England, than as necessary to emancipate or secure the liberties of Ireland.
Much comment has been made upon Mr. Fox's distinction between internal and external legislation, and I believe he has not been well understood upon that point, on either side of the channel. His remarks seemed to me to have had no other object, than a censure of the old administration, whose oppressive conduct so irritated the people, that in shaking off the internal legislation of a foreign parliament, they equally reprobated all ideas of the external, which, in the hands of an honest ministry, they would probably never complain of as an evil; but the folly and injustice of the old government had made them impatient until every restraint was taken off[1]. The remark was a sort of digression, in which not a syllable implied the least desire to retain any assumption of power over Ireland, in the English Parliament. What fell from Mr. Pitt, who seconded the
- ↑ This subject will be more clear to those who know the nature of the Irish free trade, and Irish sugar bills.
