But the above-mentioned was only one of Poyning's laws. Others provided, as their substance is given by Blackstone (1 Com.' 102) : " I. That before any (Irish) parliament be summoned or holden, the chief governor and council of Ireland shall certify to the king, under the great seal of Ireland, the considerations and causes thereof, and the articles of the acts proposed to be passed therein. 2. That after the king, in his council of England, shall have considered, approved, or altered the said act'', or any of them, and certified them back under the great seal of England, and shall have given licence to summon and hold a parliament, then the same shall be summoned and held; and therein the said acts so certified, and no other, shall be proposed, received, or rejected." It was found, however, in the course of time, that many inconveniences were occasioned by these severely restrictive regulations, which prevented any laws from being proposed, except only such as were drawn up before the parliament which should pass them was iu being; and therefore, by the 3 & 4 Ph. and 31, c. 4., it was provided that any new propositions might be certified in England for approval, even after the summons and during the session of par liament. Still this left to the parliament of Ireland nothing more than merely the power of rejecting any law proposed to it ; it could neither initiate a new law nor repeal an old one, nor even amend or alter that which was offered for its acceptance. In practice, however, the letter of the statute was somewhat relaxed. Blackstone goes on to state that the practice in his day (some years after the middle of the last century) was, " that bills are often framed In either house, under the denomination of heads for a bill or bills,' and in that shape they are offered to the consideration of the lord-Ileutenant and privy council, who, upon such parliamentary Intimation, or othenviee upon the application of private persons, receive and transmit such heads, or reject them without any transmission, to England." These heads of bills however really differed in nothing from bills or acts of parliament, except that, Instead of the words " Be it enacted," the formal com mencement of each paragraph or clause was, " We pray that it may be enacted ;" and the motion for presenting them scarcely differed, except in form, from the motion in the English House of Commons for leave to bring in a bill, a motion necessary in all cases to be assented to or carried In the affirmative before the actual bringing in of any bill. And as for the consent of the crown or the government, which it was necessary to obtain before either house of the Irish parliament could take up the consideration of any proposed law, with a view to its enactment, that would in practice probably be found to operate much in the same way with the assent of the crown, which oven in England was necessary to give validity to any bill after it had passed both houses. In the Irish as well as in the English parliament there was in fact an opportunity of discussing the proposition without the per mission of the crown. An English as well as an Irish bill required the anent of the crown before it could become law. This view of the matter has scarcely been sufficiently attended to in comparing the cir cumstances of the two legislatures. The practice of presenting heads of bills however was not introduced into the Irish parliament till after the Revolution. In the reign of Charles II., according to Lord
Mountrnorres, "the council framed bills altogether ; a negative alone on them and their several provisos was left to parliament; only a general proposition for a bill, by way of address to the lord-lieutenant and council, came from parliament:' that is to say, all that the par liament was Buffered to do was simply to request that some measure might be brought in for effecting a particular object. The object might be specified, but the means by which it was to be attained or attempted, in other words, the details and whole character of the measure, were to be left to the government. With regard to these, the parliament had only the power of accepting or rejecting them in the mass.
But the dependence of Ireland upon the English crown, and the consequent subordination of the Irish legislature, were held to go still farther than to the establishment of the principle that laws might be made by the parliament of England to bind Ireland. The Irish I louse of Lords had entertained writs of error upon judgments in the courts of common law from the reign of Charles I., and appeals in equity from the Restoration. Nevertheless, in the year 1719, a judg ment in the Court of Exchequer having been reversed by the House of Lords, the question was carried to the House of Lords of Great Britain, by which the judgment of the Court of Exchequer was affirmed. On this the Irish House of Lords resolved that no appeal lay from the Court of Exchequer in Ireland to the parliameut of Great Britain. But this resolution was immediately met by an act of the British parliament, the 5 Gee. I. c. 1, declaring that "the king's majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal of Great Britain in parliament assembled, had, bath, and of right ought to have full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the people and the kingdom of Ireland ; and that the House of Lords of Ireland have not nor of right ought to have any jurisdiction to judge of, reverse, or affirm any judgment, sentence, or decree given or made In ally court within the said kingdom ; and that all proceedings before the said House of Lords upon any such judgment, sentence, or decree are and are hereby declared to be utterly null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever." In this state the law remained till the year 1782. In that year the statute 5 Om. I. c. 1, was repealed by the 22 Cleo. III. c. 53; and the following year the 23 Geo. 111. e. 23, declared the exclusive right and authority of the Irish parliament and courts of justice in all matters of legislation and judicature for Ireland. Finally, In 1800, by the Act of Union, the 89 & 40 Goo. III. c. 67, the Irish parliaineut was extinguished, and it was enacted that the United Kingdom should be represented in one and the same parliament, to be called the parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The earliest Irish statutes on record are of the year 1310 ; but from that date there arc none till the year 1429, from which time there is a regular series. The whole have been printed, and there are also abridgments by Bullingbroke and Belcher, Hunt, and others.
(Wakefield's Account of Inland; Hallam's Constitutional History of England.)