Portland,
I have it in command from His Majesty, to inform this House, that His Majesty being concerned to find that discontents and jealousies are prevailing among his loyal Subjects of this Country, upon matters of great weight and importance, His Majesty recommends to this House to take the same into their most serious consideration, in order to such a Final Adjustment as may give mutual satisfaction to his Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland.
P.
Copy of a Resolution of the House of Lords in Ireland, Mercurii, 17ᵒ die Aprilis, 1782.
Resolved, By the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled Nemine dissentiente, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, to return him our thanks for the most gracious Message sent to this House by His Majesty’s command, through the medium of His Grace the Lord Lieutenant, and to assure him of our most unshaken loyalty and attachment to His Majesty’s person and government, and of the lively sense we entertain of his paternal care of his people of Ireland, in thus inquiring into the discontents and jealousies that subsist amongst them, in order to such Final Adjustment as may give mutual satisfaction to his Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland.
That, thus encouraged by His Royal Interposition, we shall beg leave, with all duty and affection, to lay before His Majesty the cause of such discontents and jealousies.
To represent to His Majesty, That his subjects of Ireland are entitled to a free constitution; that the Imperial Crown of Ireland is inseparably annexed to the Crown of Great Britain, on which Connection the happiness of both nations essentially depends; but that the Kingdom of Ireland is a distinct dominion, having a Parliament of her own, the sole Legislature thereof.
That there is no power whatsoever competent to make laws to bind this nation, except the King, Lords, and Commons, of Ireland; upon which exclusive Right of Legislation we consider the very essence of our liberties to depend, a Right which we claim as the Birth-right of the People of Ireland, and which we are determined, in every situation of life, to assert and maintain.
To represent to His Majesty, That we have seen with concern certain claims, both of legislature and judicature, asserted by the Parliament of Great Britain, in an Act passed in Great Britain in the sixth year of George the First, intituled “An Act for the better securing the Dependency of Ireland upon the Crown of Great Britain:”