Address at the opening meeting of the twenty-fourth session

Abstract

We have, at once, to labour that we may keep fairly abreast with the current of Imperial legislation, and to take care that, so far as it is applicable here, it shall be applied with a due consideration of our peculiar wants. Every one who has noted the history of English law — since it took the place of that ancient code which, for so many ages, regulated with wonderful precision and minuteness the details of the social life of Ireland, and which has not yet ceased to operate on the spirit of her people — must know that it has not acted precisely in the same way, in the country which produced and in that which has adopted it.