not know, at least in the present time, how any power can long

continue.

If it be true that both parties are carrying things to extre mities in different ways, the object which you and I have in common, that is to say, the union and concord of our country, on the basis of the actual representation, without risking those evils which any change in the form of our legislature must inevitably bring on, can never be obtained. On the part of the catholics (that is to say, of the body of the people of the kingdom) it is a terrible alternative, either to submit to the yoke of declared and insulting enemies, or to seek a remedy in plunging themselves into the horrors and crimes of that jacobinism, which unfortunately is not disagreeable to the principles and inclinations of, I am afraid, the majority of what we call the protestants of Ireland. The protestant part of that kingdom is represented by the government itself to be, by whole counties, in nothing less than open rebellion. I am sure that it is every where teeming with dangerous conspiracy.

I believe it will be found, that though the principles of the catholics, and the incessant endeavours of their clergy, have kept them from being generally infected with the systems of this time, yet, whenever their situation brings them nearer into contact with the jacobin protestants, they are more or less infected with their doctrines.

It is a matter for melancholy reflection; but I am fully convinced, that many persons in Ireland would be glad that the catholics should become more and more infected with the jacobin madness, in order to furnish new arguments for fortifying them in their monopoly. On any other ground, it is impossible to account for the late language of your men in power. If statesmen, (let me suppose for argument) upon the most solid political principles, conceive themselves obliged to resist the wishes of the far more numerous, and, as things stand, not the worse part of the community, one would think that they would naturally put their refusal as much as possible upon temporary grounds; and that they would act towards them in the most conciliatory manner, and would talk to them in the most gentle and soothing language; for refusal, in itself, is not a very gracious thing and unfortunately, men are very quickly irritated out of their principles. Nothing is more discouraging to the loyalty of any description of men, than to represent to them that their humiliation and subjection make a principal part in the fundamental and invariable policy which regards the conjunction of these two kingdoms. This is not the way to give them a warm interest in that conjunction.

My poor opinion is, that the closest connexion between Great Britain and Ireland is essential to the well-being, I had almost said, to the very being, of the two kingdoms. For that purpose, I humbly conceive that the whole of the superior, and what I should call imperial politics, ought to have its residence here; and that Ireland, locally, civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look up to Great Britain in all matters of peace or of war; in all those points to be guided by her: and, in a word, with her to live and to die. At bottom, Ireland has no other choice; I mean, no other rational choice.

I think, indeed, that Great Britain would be ruined by the separation of Ireland; but, as there are degrees even in ruin, it would fall the most heavily on Ireland. By such a separation Ireland would be the most completely undone country in the world; the most wretched, the most distracted, and, in the end, the most desolate part of the habitable globe. Little do many people in Ireland consider how much of its prosperity has been owing to, and still depends upon, its intimate connexion with this kingdom. But, more sensible of this great truth than perhaps any other man, I have rever conceived, or can conceive, that the connexion is strengthened by making the major part of the inhabitants of your country believe that their ease, and their satisfaction, and their equalization with the rest of their fellow-subjects of Ireland, are things adverse to the principles of that connexion; or that their subjection to a small monopolizing junto, composed of one of the smallest of their own internal factions, is the very condition upon which the harmony of the two kingdoms essentially depends. I was sorry to hear that this principle, or something not unlike it, was publicly and fully avowed by persons of great rank and authority in the house of lords in Ireland.

As to a participation on the part of the catholics in the privileges and capacities which are withheld, without meaning wholly to depreciate their importance, if I had the honour of being an Irish catholic, I should be content to expect satisfaction upon that subject with patience, until the minds of my adversaries, few but powerful, were come to a proper temper: because, if the catholics did enjoy without fraud, chicane, or partiality, some fair portion of those advantages which the law, even as now the law is, leaves open to them; and if the rod were not shaken over them at every turn, their present condition would be tolerable; as compared with their former condition, it would be happy. But the most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of a people, when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them. Men do not [ 33 ]

VOL. V.

Ive upon blotted paper. The favourable or the hostile mind of the ruling power is of far more importance to mankind, for good or evil, than the black letter of any statute. Late acts of parliament, whilst they fixed at least a temporary bar to the hopes and progress of the larger description of the nation, opened to them certain subordinate objects of equality; but it is impossible that the people should imagine that any fair measure of advantage is intended to them, when they hear the laws, by which they were admitted to this limited qualification, publicly reprobated as excessive and inconsiderate. They must think that there is a hankering after the old penal and persecuting code. Their alarm must be great, when that declaration is made by a person in very high and important office in the house of commons, and as the very first specimen and auspice of a new government.

All this is very unfortunate. I have the honour of an old acquaintance, and entertain, in common with you, a very high esteem for the few English persons who are concerned in the government of Ireland; but I am not ignorant of the relation these transitory ministers bear to the more settled Irish part of your administration. It is a delicate topic, upon which I wish to say but little; though my reflections upon it are many and serious. There is a great cry against English influence. I am quite sure that it is Irish influence that dreads the English habits.

Great disorders have long prevailed in Ireland. It is not long since that the catholics were the suffering party from those disorders. I am sure they were not protected as the case required. Their sufferings became a matter of discussion in parliament. It produced the most infuriated declamation against them that I have ever read. An inquiry was moved into the facts. The declamation was at least tolerated, if not approved. The inquiry was absolutely rejected. In that case, what is left for those who are abandoned by government, but to join with the persons who are capable of injuring them or protecting them, as they oppose or concur in their designs? This will produce a very fatal kind of union amongst the people; but it is an union which an unequal administration of justice tends necessarily to produce.

If any thing could astonish one at this time, it is the war, that the rulers in Ireland think it proper to carry on against the person whom they call the pope, and against all his adherents, whenever they think they have the power of manifesting their hostility. Without in the least derogating from the talents of your theological politicians, or from the military abilities of

your commanders (who act on the same principles) in Ireland; and without derogating from the zeal of either, it appears to me that the protestant directory of Paris, as statesmen, and the protestant hero, Bonaparte, as a general, have done more to destroy the said pope and all his adherents, in all their capacities, than the junto in Ireland have been ever able to effect. You must submit your fasces to theirs, and at best be contented to follow, with songs of gratulation or invectives, according to your humour, the triumphal car of those great conquerors. Had that true protestant, Hoche, with an army not infected with the slightest tincture of popery, made good his landing in Ireland, he would have saved you from a great deal of the trouble, which is taken to keep under a description of your fellowcitizens, obnoxious to you from their religion. It would not have a month's existence, supposing his success. This is the alliance, which, under the appearance of hostility, we act as if we wished to promote. All is well, provided we are safe from popery.

It was not necessary for you, my dear sir, to explain yourself to me, (in justification of your good wishes to your fellow-citizens) concerning your total alienation from the principles of the catholics. I am more concerned in what we agree, than in what we differ. You know the impossibility of our forming any judgment upon the opinions, religious, moral or political, of those, who in the largest sense are called protestants; at least as these opinions and tenets form a qualification for holding any civil, judicial, military, or even ecclesiastical situation. I have no doubt of the orthodox opinion of many both of the clergy and laity, professing the established religion in Ireland, and of many, even amongst the dissenters, relative to the great points of the christian faith: but that orthodoxy concerns them only as individuals. As a qualification for employment, we all know that in Ireland it is not necessary that they should profess any religion at all: so that the war that we make is upon certain theological tenets, about which scholastic disputes are carried on æquo Marte by controvertists, on their side, as able and as learned, and perhaps as well intentioned, as those are who fight the battle on the other part. To them I would leave those controversies. I would turn my mind to what is more within its competence, and has been more my study, (though for a man of the world I have thought of those things) I mean the moral, civil and political good of the countries we belong to, and in which God has appointed your station and mine. Let every man be as pious as he pleases; and in the way that he pleases; but it is agreeable neither to piety nor to

policy to give exclusively all manner of civil privileges and advantages to a negative religion-such is the protestant without a certain creed; and at the same time to deny those privileges to men, whom we know to agree to an iota in every one positive doctrine, which all of us who profess the religion authoritatively taught in England, hold ourselves, according to our faculties, bound to believe. The catholics of Ireland (as I have said) have the whole of our positive religion; our difference is only a negation of certain tenets of theirs. If we strip ourselves of that part of catholicism, we abjure christianity. If we drive them from that olding without engaging them in some other positive religion, (which you know by our qualifying laws we do not) what do we better, than to hold out to them terrors on the one side, and bounties on the other, in favour of that, which, for any thing we know to the contrary, may be pure atheism?

You are well aware, that when a man renounces the Roman religion, there is no civil inconvenience or incapacity whatsoever, which shall hinder him from joining any new or old sect of dissenters; or of forming a sect of his own invention, upon the most antichristian principles. Let Mr. Thomas Paine obtain a pardon, (as on change of ministry he may) there is nothing to hinder him from setting up a church of his own in the very midst of you. He is a natural-born British subject. His French citizenship does not disqualify him, at least upon a peace. This protestant apostle is as much above all suspicion of popery, as the greatest and most zealous of your sanhedrim in Ireland can possibly be. On purchasing a qualification, (which his friends of the directory are not so poor as to be unable to effect) he may sit in parliament; and there is no doubt that there is not one of your tests against popery, that he will not take as fairly, and as much ex animo, as the best of your zealot statesmen. I push this point no further; and only adduce this example (a pretty strong one, and fully in point) to show what I take to be the madness and folly of driving men, under the existing circumstances, from any positive religion whatever, into the irreligion of the times, and its sure concomitant principles of anarchy.

When religion is brought into a question of civil and political arrangement, it must be considered more politically than theologically, at least by us, who are nothing more than mere laymen. In that light the case of the catholics of Ireland is peculiarly hard, whether they be laity or clergy. If any of them take part, like the gentleman you mention, with some of the most accredited protestants of the country in projects, which cannot be more abhorrent to your nature and disposition