The Irish volunteers, first forty, then sixty, and at last a hundred thousand strong, were virtually an army enrolled to overawe the English ministry and Parliament.

Following the spirit, if not the actual path, of the Americans, they raised a cry for commercial and legislative independence.

They were too strong to be resisted, and in 1782 the Irish Parliament acquired the privilege of initiating and conducting its own business, without the sanction or control either of the Privy Council or of the English Parliament.

Dazzled by the chance of acquiring legislative independence, they had been content with the comparatively small commercial boons obtained by Lord Nugent and Burke in 1778, and with the removal of further restrictions by the alarmed minister in the following year.

After the concession of their independence in 1782, they found that to procure the abolition of the remaining restrictions on their commerce--the right of trade, for instance, with America and Africa--the consent of the English legislature was as necessary as it had ever been.