CHAP. moft remarkable inftance of which was in V.

one thousand fix hundred and fixty-one, in the cafe of lord Shrewsbury, earl of Waterford and Wexford in Ireland, which has been cited in the foregoing remarks.

In England, as I heard from a very intelligent officer of the house of lords, to whom I owe much information, the judges do not regularly attend to carry bills, unless it be fuch as relate to the royal family; nor at any other time unless when they are

particularly called upon in a body.

The carrying of bills is generally allotted in England to the mafters in chancery; two of the college of twelve mafters regularly attend for that purpose: in Ireland a rota is established, by which two judges always attend, and carry money bills; common bills are carried by the four masters in chancery ; and two judges are occafionally ordered to remain in town, who are excused from the circuits for this and other purposes.

V.

I have had the presumption to hazard a CHAP. conjecture, that this cuftom of the judges carrying bills originated from the ancient practice of their forming the resolutions of the two houses into bills at the end of the feffion, which was the early mode of framing laws, nor have modern times, perhaps, devised a better mode of legislation.

The orders of the lords of Ireland * are fo accurately transcribed from those in England,

* The standing orders of the lords, in both kingdoms, contain no regulations for the trials of peers. From the commencement of the journals there are but two inftances of these trials in Ireland, viz. of viscount Neterville in 1743; and of lord Santry near that period, whofe trial is not recorded in the journals, as lord Santry was tried in the lord high steward's court in the interval of parliament. Both of them were indicted for murder: the former was acquitted; the latter found guilty, but pardoned as to his life; though the title and estate were forfeited, as murder of malice prepenfe was made high treafon in Ireland by an act of the foth of Hen. VII. c. 21.

The chancellor Windham was the first, and the only high steward ever appointed in that kingdom: a circumftance noted in his epitaph in Salisbury cathedral,

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 confent 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 Buckinghamfhire*. I could wish it were adopted, as it might be an introduction to the same 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 consent to acts without the advice of the English privy council: from this circumftance, with others, that parliament was confidered to be illegally convened.

I have observed, 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 lofs 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 substituted in their place by order of his majesty,

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