And under his government a bill for shortening Parliaments was passed, though it fixed the possible duration of each Parliament at eight years instead of seven, the variation being made to prevent a general election from being held at the same time in both countries, but, according to common belief, solely in order to keep up a mark of difference between the Irish and English Parliaments.

And those who entertained this suspicion fancied they saw a confirmation of it in the retention of the regulation that the Irish Parliament should only sit in alternate years, a practice wholly inconsistent with any proper idea of the duties and privileges of a Parliament such as prevailed on this side of the Channel; since a Parliament whose sessions were thus intermittent could not possibly exercise that degree of supervision over the revenue, either in its collection or its expenditure, which is among its most important duties.
And the continued maintenance of this practice must be regarded farther as a proof that the English legislators had not yet learned to consider Ireland as an integral part of the kingdom, entitled in every particular to equal rights with England and Scotland.

Indeed, it is impossible for any Englishman to contemplate the history of the treatment of Ireland by the English legislators, whether Kings, ministers, or Parliaments, for more than a century and a half, without equal feelings of shame at the injustice and wonder at the folly of their conduct.

Not only was Ireland denied freedom of trade with England (a denial as inconsistent not only with equity but also with common-sense as if Windsor had been refused free trade with London),[126] but Irish manufactures were deliberately checked and suppressed to gratify the jealous selfishness of the English manufacturers.

Macaulay, in his zeal for the memory of William III., has not scrupled to apologize for, if not to justify, the measures deliberately sanctioned by that sovereign for the extinction of the Irish woollen manufactures, on the ground that Ireland was not a sister kingdom, but a colony; that "the general rule is, that the English Parliament is competent to legislate for all colonies planted by English subjects, and that no reason existed for considering the case of the colony in Ireland as an exception."[127] There is, perhaps, no passage in his whole work less to his credit.