very awkward position. I do not like this kind of dilemmas, especially when they are practical. Then, since our oldest fundamental laws follow, or rather couple, freehold with franchise; since no principle of the Revolution shakes these liberties; since the oldest of one of the best monuments of the constitution demands for the Irish the privilege which they supplicate; since the principles of the Revolution coincide with the declarations of the Great Charter; since the practice of the Revolution, in this point, did not contradict its principles; since, from that event, twenty-five years had elapsed, before a domineering party, on a party principle, had ventured to disfranchise, without any proof whatsoever of abuse, the greater part of the community; since the king's coronation oath does not stand in his way to the performance of his duty to all his subjects; since you have given to all other dissenters these privileges without limit, which are hitherto withheld, without any limitation whatsoever, from the catholicks; since no nation in the world has ever been known to exclude so great a body of men (not born slaves) from the civil state, and all the benefits of its constitution; the whole question comes before parliament as a matter for its prudence. I do not put the thing on a question of right. That discretion, which, in judicature, is well said by Lord Coke to be a crooked cord, in legislature is a golden rule. Supplicants ought not to appear too much in the character of litigants. If the subject think so highly and reverently of the sovereign authority, as not to claim any thing of right, so that it may seem to be independent of the power and free choice of its government; and if the sovereign, on his part, considers the advantages of the subjects as their right, and all their reasonable wishes as so many claims; in the fortunate conjunction of these mutual dispositions are laid the foundations of a happy and prosperous commonwealth. For my own part, desiring of all things that the authority of the legislature under which I was born, and which I cherish, not only with a dutiful awe, but with a partial and cordial affection, to be maintained in the utmost possible respect, I never will suffer myself to suppose, that, at bottom, their discretion will be found to be at variance with their justice. presentation. Such a representation I think to be, in many cases, even better than the actual. It possesses most of its advantages, and is free from many of its inconveniences; it corrects the irregularities in the literal representation, when the shifting current of human affairs, or the acting of publick interests in different ways, carry it obliquely from its first line of direction. The people may err in their choice; but common interest and common sentiment are rarely mistaken. But this sort of virtual representation cannot have a long or sure existence, if it has not a substratum in the actual. The member must have some relation to the constituent. As things stand, the catholick, as a catholick, and belonging to a description, has no virtual relation to the representative; but the contrary. There is a relation in mutual obligation. Gratitude may not always have a very lasting power; but the frequent recurrence of an application for favours will revive and refresh it, and will necessarily produce some degree of mutual attention. It will produce, at least, acquaintance. The several descriptions of people will not be kept so much apart as they now are, as if they were not only separate nations, but separate species. The stigma and reproach, the hideous mask will be taken off, and men will see each other as they are. Sure I am, that there have been thousands in Ireland, who have never conversed with a Roman catholick in their whole lives, unless they happened to talk to their gardener's workmen, or to ask their way, when they had lost it, in their sports; or at best, who had known them only as footmen, or other domesticks, of the second and third order: and so averse were they, some time ago, to have them near their persons, that they would not employ even those who could never find their way beyond the stable. I well remember a great, and in many respects a good, man, who advertised for a blacksmith; but at the same time added, he must be a protestant. It is impossible that such a state of things, though natural goodness in many persons will undoubtedly make exceptions, must not produce alienation on the one side, and pride and insolence on the other. in Reduced to a question of discretion, and that discretion exercised solely upon what will appear The whole being at discretion, I beg leave just best for the conservation of the state on its preto suggest some matters for your consideration sent basis, I should recommend it to your serious Whether the government in church or state is thoughts, whether the narrowing of the foundation likely to be more secure by continuing causes of is always the best way to secure the building? grounded discontent, to a very great number (say The body of disfranchised men will not be perfectly two millions) of the subjects? or, Whether the satisfied to remain always in that state. If they constitution, combined and balanced as it is, will are not satisfied, you have two millions of subjects be rendered more solid, by depriving so large a your bosom, full of uneasiness; not that they part of the people of all concern, or interest, or cannot overturn the act of settlement, and put share, in its representation, actual or virtual? I themselves and you under an arbitrary master; here mean to lay an emphasis on the word virtual. or, that they are not permitted to spawn a hydra Virtual representation is that in which there is a of wild republicks, on principles of a pretended communion of interests, and a sympathy in feel-natural equality in man; but, because you will ings and desires between those who act in the name of any description of people, and the people in whose name they act, though the trustees are not actually chosen by them. This is virtual re not suffer them to enjoy the ancient, fundamental, tried advantages of a British constitution: that you will not permit them to profit of the protection of a common father, or the freedom of common citi zens; and that this only reason which can be as- | their independence, and precipitate an union with signed for this disfranchisement has a tendency Great Britain. I have heard a discussion concernmore deeply to ulcerate their minds, than the acting such an union amongst all sorts of men ever of exclusion itself. What the consequence of such feelings must be, it is for you to look to. To warn, is not to menace. I am far from asserting, that men will not excite disturbances without just cause. I know that such an assertion is not true. But, neither is it true that disturbances have never just complaints for their origin. I am sure that it is hardly prudent to furnish them with such causes of complaint, as every man who thinks the British constitution a benefit may think at least colourable and plausible. Several are in dread of the manœuvres of certain persons among the dissenters, who turn this ill humour to their own ill purposes. You know, better than I can, how much these proceedings of certain among the dissenters are to be feared. You are to weigh, with the temper which is natural to you, whether it may be for the safety of our establishment, that the catholicks should be ultimately persuaded that they have no hope to enter into the constitution, but through the dissenters. Think, whether this be the way to prevent or dissolve factious combinations against the church, or the .state. Reflect seriously on the possible consequences of keeping, in the heart of your country, a bank of discontent, every hour accumulating, upon which every description of seditious men may draw at pleasure. They, whose principles of faction will dispose them to the establishment of an arbitrary monarchy, will find a nation of men who have no sort of interest in freedom; but who will have an interest in that equality of justice or favour, with which a wise despot must view all his subjects who do not attack the foundations of his power. Love of liberty itself may, in such men, become the means of establishing an arbitrary domination. On the other hand, they who wish for a democratick republick, will find a set of men who have no choice between civil servitude, and the entire ruin of a mixed constitution. Suppose the people of Ireland divided into three parts; of these (I speak within compass) two are catholick. Of the remaining third, one half is composed of dissenters. There is no natural union between those descriptions. It may be produced. If the two parts catholick be driven into a close confederacy with half the third part of protestants, with a view to a change in the constitution in church or state, or both; and you rest the whole of their security on a handful of gentlemen, clergy, and their dependants; compute the strength you have in Ireland, to oppose to grounded discontent; to capricious innovation; to blind popular fury, and to ambitious turbulent intrigue. You mention that the minds of some gentlemen are a good deal heated: and that it is often said, that, rather than submit to such persons having a share in their franchises, they would throw up since I remember any thing. For my own part, I have never been able to bring my mind to any thing clear and decisive upon the subject. There cannot be a more arduous question. As far as I can form an opinion, it would not be for the mutual advantage of the two kingdoms. Persons, however, more able than I am, think otherwise. But, whatever the merits of this union may be, to make it a menace, it must be shewn to be an evil; and an evil more particularly to those who are threatened with it, than to those who hold it out as a terrour. I really do not see how this threat of an union can operate, or that the catholicks are more likely to be losers by that measure than the churchmen. The humours of the people, and of politicians too, are so variable in themselves, and are so much under the occasional influence of some leading men, that it is impossible to know what turn the publick mind here would take on such an event. There is but one thing certain concerning it. Great divisions and vehement passions would precede this union, both on the measure itself and on its terms; and particularly, this very question of a share in the representation for the catholicks, from whence the project of an union originated, would form a principal part in the discussion; and in the temper in which some gentlemen seem inclined to throw themselves, by a sort of high, indignant passion, into the scheme, those points would not be deliberated with all possible calm ness. From my best observation, I should greatly doubt, whether, in the end, these gentlemen would obtain their object, so as to make the exclusion of two millions of their countrymen a fundamental article in the union. The demand would be of a nature quite unprecedented. You might obtain the union and yet a gentleman, who, under the new union establishment, would aspire to the honour of representing his county, might possibly be as much obliged, as he may fear to be, under the old separate establishment, to the unsupportable mortification of asking his neighbours, who have a different opinion concerning the elements in the sacrament, for their votes. I believe, nay, I am sure, that the people of Great Britain, with or without an union, might be depended upon, in cases of any real danger, to aid the government of Ireland, with the same cordiality as they would support their own, against any wicked attempts to shake the security of the happy constitution in church and state. But before Great Britain engages in any quarrel, the cause of the dispute would certainly be a part of her consideration. If confusions should arise in that kingdom, from too steady an attachment to a proscriptive, monopolizing system, and from the resolution of regarding the franchise, and in it the security of the subject, as belonging rather to religious opinions than to civil qualification and civil conduct, I doubt whether you might quite certainly reckon | on obtaining an aid of force from hence, for the support of that system. We might extend your distractions to this country, by taking part in them. England will be indisposed, I suspect, to send an army for the conquest of Ireland. What was done in 1782 is a decisive proof of her sentiments of justice and moderation. She will not be fond of making another American war in Ireland. The principles of such a war would but too much resemble the former one. The well-disposed and the ill-disposed in England would (for different reasons perhaps) be equally averse to such an enterprise. The confiscations, the publick auctions, the private grants, the plantations, the transplantations, which formerly animated so many adventurers, even among sober citizens, to such Irish expeditions, and which possibly might have animated some of them to the American, can have no existence in the case that we suppose. Let us form a supposition (no foolish or ungrounded supposition) that in an age when men are infinitely more disposed to heat themselves with political than religious controversies, the former should entirely prevail, as we see that in some places they have prevailed, over the latter; and that the catholicks of Ireland, from the courtship paid them on the one hand, and the high tone of refusal on the other, should, in order to enter into all the rights of subjects, all become protestant dissenters; and as the other do, take all your oaths. They would all obtain their civil objects; and the change, for any thing I know to the contrary, (in the dark as I am about the protestant dissenting tenets,) might be of use to the health of their souls. But, what security our constitution, in church or state, could derive from that event, I cannot possibly discern. Depend upon it, it is as true as nature is true, that if you force them out of the religion of habit, education, or opinion, it is not to yours they will ever go. Shaken in their minds, they will go to that where the dogmas are fewest; where they are the most uncertain; where they lead them the least to a consideration of what they have abandoned. They will go to that uniformly democratick system, to whose first movements they owed their emancipation. I recommend you seriously to turn this in your mind. Believe that it requires your best and maturest thoughts. Take what course you please-union or no union; whether the people remain catholicks or become protestant dissenters, sure it is, that the present state of monopoly cannot continue. If England were animated, as I think she is not, with her former spirit of domination, and with the strong theological hatred which she once cherished for that description of her fellow-christians and fellow-subjects; I am yet convinced, that after the fullest success in a ruinous struggle, you would be obliged to abandon that monopoly. We were obliged to do this, even when every thing promised success in the American business. you should make this experiment at last, under If the pressure of any necessity, you never can do it well. But if, instead of falling into a passion, the leading gentlemen of the country themselves should undertake the business cheerfully, and with hearty affection towards it, great advantages would follow. What is forced, cannot be modified: but here you may measure your concessions. It is a consideration of great moment, that you make the desired admission without altering the system of your representation in the smallest degree, or in any part. You may leave that deliberation of a parliamentary change or reform, if ever you should think fit to engage in it, uncomplicated and unembarrassed with the other question. Whereas, if they are mixed and confounded, as some people attempt to mix and confound them, no one can answer for the effects on the constitution itself. grees. There is another advantage in taking up this business singly, and by an arrangement for the single object. It is that you may proceed by deWe must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. All we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change shall proceed by insensible degrees. This has all the benefits which may be in change, without any of the inconveniences of mutation. Every thing is provided for as it arrives. This mode will, on the one hand, prevent the unfixing old interests at once: a thing which is apt to breed a black and sullen discontent in those who are at once dispossessed of all their influence and consideration. This gradual course, on the other side, will prevent men, long under depression, from being intoxicated with a large draught of new power, which they always abuse with a licentious insolence. But wishing, as I do, the change to be gradual and cautious, I would, in my first steps, lean rather to the side of enlargement than restriction. It is one excellence of our constitution, that all our rights of provincial election regard rather property than person. It is another, that the rights which approach more nearly to the personal are most of them corporate, and suppose a restrained and strict education of seven years in some useful occupation. In both cases the practice may have slid from the principle. The standard of qualification in both cases may be so low, or not so judiciously chosen, as in some degree to frustrate the end. But all this is for your prudence in the case before you. You may raise, a step or two, the qualification of the catholick voters. But if you were, to-morrow, to put the catholick freeholder on the footing of the most favoured forty-shilling protestant dissenter, you know that such is the actual state of Ireland, this would not make a sensible alteration in almost any one election in the kingdom. The effect in their favour, even defensively, would be infinitely slow. But it would be healing; it would be satisfactory and protecting. The stigma would be removed. By admitting settled, permanent substance in lieu of the numbers, you would avoid the great danger of our time, that of setting | holders, and an aristocratick representation, at the up number against property. The numbers ought choice of the Crown, neither was the choice of the never to be neglected; because (besides what is due Crown, nor the election of the landholders, limited to them as men) collectively, though not indivi- by a consideration of religion. We had no dread dually, they have great property: they ought to for the protestant church, which we settled there, have therefore protection: they ought to have because we permitted the French catholicks, in security they ought to have even consideration: the utmost latitude of the description, to be free but they ought not to predominate. subjects. They are good subjects, I have no doubt; but I will not allow that any French Ca My dear Sir, I have nearly done; I meant to write you a long letter; I have written a long dis-nadian catholicks are better men or better citisertation. I might have done it earlier and better, zens than the Irish of the same communion. I might have been more forcible and more clear, Passing from the extremity of the west, to the if I had not been interrupted as I have been; and extremity almost of the east; I have been many this obliges me not to write to you in my own years (now entering into the twelfth) employed hand. Though my hand but signs it, my heart in supporting the rights, privileges, laws, and goes with what I have written. Since I could think immunities, of a very remote people. I have not at all, those have been my thoughts. You know as yet been able to finish my task. I have strugthat thirty-two years ago they were as fully ma-gled through much discouragement and much tured in my mind as they are now. A letter of opposition, much obloquy, much calumny, for a mine to Lord Kenmare, though not by my desire, people with whom I have no tie, but the common and full of lesser mistakes, has been printed in bond of mankind. In this I have not been left Dublin. It was written ten or twelve years ago, alone. We did not fly from our undertaking, at the time when I began the employment, which because the people are Mahometans or pagans, I have not yet finished, in favour of another dis- and that a great majority of the Christians amongst tressed people, injured by those who have van- them are papists. Some gentlemen in Ireland, I quished them, or stolen a dominion over them. dare say, have good reasons for what they may do, It contained my sentiments then; you will see how which do not occur to me. I do not presume to far they accord with my sentiments now. Time condemn them: but thinking and acting as I have has more and more confirmed me in them all. done, towards these remote nations, I should not The present circumstances fix them deeper in my know how to shew my face, here or in Ireland, if I mind. should say that all the pagans, all the mussulmen, and even all the papists, (since they must form the highest stage in the climax of evil,) are worthy of a liberal and honourable condition, except those of one of the descriptions, which forms the majority of the inhabitants of the country in which you and I were born. If such are the catholicks of Ireland,―ill-natured and unjust people, from our own data, may be inclined not to think better of the protestants of a soil, which is supposed to infuse into its sects a kind of venom unknown in other places. I voted last session, if a particular vote could be distinguished, in unanimity, for an establishment of the church of England conjointly with the establishment which was made some years before by act of parliament, of the Roman catholick, in the French conquered country of Canada. At the time of making this English ecclesiastical establishment, we did not think it necessary for its safety, to destroy the former Gallican church settlement. In our first act we settled a government altogether monarchical, or nearly so. In that system, the Canadian catholicks were far from being deprived of You hated the old system as early as I did. Your the advantages or distinctions, of any kind, which first juvenile lance was broken against that giant. they enjoyed under their former monarchy. It is I think you were even the first who attacked the true, that some people, and amongst them one emi-grim phantom. You have an exceedingly good unnent divine, predicted at that time, that by this step we should lose our dominions in America. He foretold that the pope would send his indulgences hither; that the Canadians would fall in with France; would declare independence, and draw or force our colonies into the same design. The independence happened according to his prediction; but in directly the reverse order. All our English protestant countries revolted. They joined themselves to France and it so happened that popish Canada was the only place which preserved its fidelity; the only place in which France got no footing; the only peopled colony which now remains to Great Britain. Vain are all the prognosticks taken from ideas and passions, which survive the state of things which gave rise to them. When last year we gave a popular representation to the same Canada, by the choice of the land derstanding, very good humour, and the best beart in the world. The dictates of that temper and that heart, as well as the policy pointed out by that understanding, led you to abhor the old code. You abhorred it, as I did, for its vicious perfection. For I must do it justice: it was a complete system, full of coherence and consistency; well digested and well composed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement, in them, of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man. It is a thing humiliating enough, that we are doubtful of the effect of the medicines we compound. We are sure of our poisons. My opinion ever was (in which I heartily agree with those that admired the old code) that it was so constructed, that if there was once a breach in any essential part of it; the ruin of the whole, or nearly of the whole, was at some time or other, a certainty. For that reason I honour, and shall for ever honour and love you, and those who first caused it to stagger, crack, and gape. Others may finish; the beginners have the glory; and, take what part you please at this hour, (I think you will take the best,) your first services will never be forgotten by a grateful country. Adieu! Present my best regards to those I know, and as many as I know in our country, I honour. There never was so much ability, nor, I believe, virtue, in it. They have a task worthy of both. I doubt not they will perform it, for the stability of the church and state, and for the union and the separation of the people: for the union of the honest and peaceable of all sects; for their separation from all that is ill-intentioned and seditious in any of them. Beaconsfield, January 3, 1792. |