Speaking at the Guildhall in Bristol in 1780, Edmund Burke thus described the concessions to Ireland and the series of circumstances to which these measures owed their origin:--
"The whole kingdom of Ireland was instantly in a flame. Threatened by foreigners, and, as they thought, insulted by England, they resolved at once to resist the power of France and to cast off yours. As for us, we were able neither to protect nor to restrain them. Forty thousand men were raised and disciplined without commission from the Crown; two illegal armies were seen with banners displayed at the same time and in the same country. No executive magistrate, no judicature in Ireland, would acknowledge the legality of the army which bore the King's commission, and no law or appearance of law authorised the army commissioned by itself. In this unexampled state of things, which the least error, the least trespass on our part would have hurried down the precipice into an abyss of blood and confusion, the people of Ireland demanded a freedom of trade with arms in their hands. They interdict all commerce between the two nations; they deny all new Supply in the House of Commons, although in time of war; they stint the trust of the old revenue given for two years to all the King's predecessors to six months. The British Parliament, in a former session frightened into a limited concession by the menaces of Ireland, frightened out of it by the menaces of England, were now frightened back again, and made an universal surrender of all that had been thought the peculiar, reserved, uncommunicable rights of England--the exclusive commerce of America, of Africa, of the West Indies, all the enumerations of the Acts of Navigation, all the manufactures--iron, glass, even the sacred fleece itself--all went together. No reserve, no exception, no debate, no discussion. A sudden light broke in upon us all. It broke in, not through well-contrived and well-disposed windows, but through flaws and breaches, through the yawning chasms of our ruin. We were taught wisdom by humiliation. No town in England presumed to have a prejudice or dared to mutter a petition. What was worse, the whole Parliament of England, which retained authority for nothing but surrenders, was despoiled of every shadow of its superintendence. It was, without any qualification, denied in theory as it had been trampled upon in practice."[136]