these wild conceits? Why, neither more nor less than this-that the moral sentiments of some few amongst them do put some check on their savage theories. But let us take care. The moral sentiments, so nearly connected with early prejudice as to be almost one and the same thing, will assuredly not live long under a discipline, which has for its basis the destruction of all prejudices, and the making the mind proof against all dread of consequences flowing from the pretended truths that are taught by their philosophy. In this school the moral sentiments must grow weaker and weaker every day. The more cautious of these teachers, in laying down their maxims, draw as much of the conclusion as suits, not with their premises, but with their policy. They trust the rest to the sagacity of their pupils. Others, and these are the most vaunted for their spirit, not only lay down the same premises, but boldly draw the conclusions to the destruction of our whole constitution in church and state. But are these conclusions truly drawn? Yes, most certainly. The principles are wild and wicked. But let justice be done even to phrensy and villainy. These teachers are perfectly systematick. No man who assumes their grounds can tolerate the British constitution in church or state. These teachers profess to scorn all mediocrity; to engage for perfection; to proceed by the simplest and shortest course. They build their politicks, not on convenience but on truth; and they profess to conduct men to certain happiness by the assertion of their undoubted rights. With them there is no compromise. All other governments are usurpations, which justify and even demand resistance. Their principles always go to the extreme. They who go with the principles of the ancient Whigs, which are those contained in Mr. Burke's book, never can go too far. They may indeed stop short of some hazardous and ambiguous excellence, which they will be taught to postpone to any reasonable degree of good they may actually possess. The opinions maintained in that book never can lead to an extreme, because their foundation is laid in an opposition to extremes. The foundation of government is there laid, not in imaginary rights of men, (which at best is a confusion of judicial with civil principles,) but in political convenience, and in human nature; either as that nature is universal, or as it is modified by local habits and social aptitudes. The foundation of government (those who have read that book will recollect) is laid in a provision for our wants, and in a conformity to our duties; it is to purvey for the one; it is to enforce the other. These doctrines do of themselves gravitate to a middle point, or to some point near a middle. They suppose indeed a certain portion of liberty to be essential to all good government; but they infer that this liberty is to be blended into the government; to harmonize with its forms and its rules; and to be made subordinate to its end. Those who are not with that book are with its opposite. For there is no medium besides the medium itself. That medium is not such, because it is found there; but it is found the because it is conformable to truth and nature. In this we do not follow the author; but we and the author travel together upon the same safe and middle path. The theory contained in his book is not to for nish principles for making a new constitution, b for illustrating the principles of a constitution already made. It is a theory drawn from the fe of our government. They who oppose it are bouta to shew, that his theory militates with that fact Otherwise, their quarrel is not with his book, but with the constitution of their country. The whe scheme of our mixed constitution is to prevent ar one of its principles from being carried as far, a taken by itself, and theoretically, it would go. Ales that to be the true policy of the British systen then most of the faults with which that se stands charged will appear to be, not imperfectica into which it has inadvertently fallen, but ex lencies which it has studiously sought. To aw the perfections of extreme, all its several parts so constituted, as not alone to answer their ow several ends, but also each to limit and contr.. the others: insomuch, that take which of the pr ciples you please-you will find its operatin checked and stopped at a certain point. The st.. movement stands still rather than that any per should proceed beyond its boundary. From thes it results, that in the British constitution, there a perpetual treaty and compromise going on, se times openly, sometimes with less observation. 1 him who contemplates the British constitution, to him who contemplates the subordinate mar world, it will always be a matter of his curious investigation, to discover the secret cimutual imitation. -Finita potestas denique cuique Quanam sit ratione, atque alte terminus hærens? They who have acted, as in France they done, upon a scheme wholly different, and aim at the abstract and unlimited perfection power in the popular part, can be of no serviceus in any of our political arrangements. They, in their headlong career have overpassed the gu can furnish no example to those who aim to further. The temerity of such speculators is more an example than the timidity of others. T one sort scorns the right; the others fear it; w miss it. But those, who by violence go bea the barrier, are without question the most chievous; because to go beyond it they ove and destroy it. To say they have spirit, is nothing in their praise. The untempered su madness, blindness, immorality, and impety, serves no commendation. He that sets his h on fire because his fingers are frost-bitten, never be a fit instructor in the method of pr ing our habitations with a cheerful and salar warmth. We want no foreign examples to kindle in us the flame of liberty. The ex77 our own ancestors is abundantly sufficient to tain the spirit of freedom in its full vigour, ADC & qualify it in all its exertions. The example of a wise, moral, well-natured, and well-tempered spirit of freedom, is that alone which can be useful to as, or in the least degree reputable or safe. Our fabrick is so constituted, one part of it bears so much on the other, the parts are so made for one nother, and for nothing else, that to introduce ny foreign matter into it, is to destroy it. What has been said of the Roman empire, at least as true of the British constitutionOctingentorum annorum fortuna, disciplinaque, compages hæc coaluit; quæ convelli sine convellentium exitio non potest."-This British contitution has not been struck out at an heat by a at of presumptuous men, like the assembly of Fettifoggers run mad in Paris. "'Tis not the hasty product of a day, is the result of the thoughts of many minds, in any ages. It is no simple, no superficial thing, or to be estimated by superficial understandings. n ignorant man, who is not fool enough to eddle with his clock, is however sufficiently conlent to think he can safely take to pieces, and it together at his pleasure, a moral machine of other guise, importance, and complexity, comosed of far other wheels, and springs, and bances, and counteracting and co-operating powers. fen little think how immorally they act in rashly eddling with what they do not understand. Their lusive good intention is no sort of excuse for eir presumption. They who truly mean well ust be fearful of acting ill. The British constition may have its advantages pointed out to ise and reflecting minds; but it is of too high an der of excellence to be adapted to those which e common. It takes in too many views, it akes too many combinations, to be so much as mprehended by shallow and superficial underandings. Profound thinkers will know it in its ason and spirit. The less enquiring will recogse it in their feelings and their experience. ey will thank God they have a standard, which, the most essential point of this great concern, Il put them on a par with the most wise and owing. If we do not take to our aid the foregone studies men reputed intelligent and learned, we shall always beginners. But men must learn some-ere; and the new teachers mean no more than at they effect, as far as they succeed, that is, to prive men of the benefit of the collected wisdom mankind, and to make them blind disciples of eir own particular presumption. Talk to these uded creatures (all the disciples and most of the sters) who are taught to think themselves so sly fitted up and furnished, and you will find hing in their houses but the refuse of Knaves re; nothing but the rotten stuff, worn out in service of delusion and sedition in all ages, and ch being newly furbished up, patched, and vared, serves well enough for those who being unuainted with the conflict which has always been maintained between the sense and the nonsense of mankind, know nothing of the former existence and the ancient refutation of the same follies. It is nearly two thousand years since it has been observed, that these devices of ambition, avarice, and turbulence, were antiquated. They are, indeed, the most ancient of all common-places; commonplaces, sometimes of good and necessary causes; more frequently of the worst, but which decide upon neither.-Eadem semper causa, libido et avaritia, et mutandarum rerum amor.-Ceterum libertas et speciosa nomina pretexuntur; nec quisquam alienum servitium, et dominationem sibi concupivit, ut non eadem ista vocabula usurparet. Rational and experienced men tolerably well know, and have always known, how to distinguish between true and false liberty; and between the genuine adherence and the false pretence to what is true. But none, except those who are profoundly studied, can comprehend the elaborate contrivance of a fabrick fitted to unite private and publick liberty, with publick force, with order, with peace, with justice, and, above all, with the institutions formed for bestowing permanence and stability, through ages, upon this invaluable whole. Place, for instance, before your eyes, such a man as Montesquieu. Think of a genius not born in every country, or every time; a man gifted by nature with a penetrating, aquiline eye; with a judgment prepared with the most extensive erudition; with an herculean robustness of mind, and nerves not to be broken with labour; a man who could spend twenty years in one pursuit. Think of a man, like the universal patriarch in Milton, (who had drawn up before him in his prophetick vision the whole series of the generations which were to issue from his loins,) a man capable of placing in review, after having brought together from the east, the west, the north and the south, from the coarseness of the rudest barbarism to the most refined and subtle civilization, all the schemes of government which had ever prevailed amongst mankind, weighing, measuring, collating, and comparing them all, joining fact with theory, and calling into council, upon all this infinite assemblage of things, all the speculations which have fatigued the understandings of profound reasoners in all times!-Let us then consider, that all these were but so many preparatory steps to qualify a man, and such a man, tinctured with no national prejudice, with no domestick affection, to admire, and to hold out to the admiration of mankind, the constitution of England ! And shall we Englishmen revoke to such a suit? Shall we, when so much more than he has produced remains still to be understood and admired, instead of keeping ourselves in the schools of real science, choose for our teachers men incapable of being taught, whose only claim to know is, that they have never doubted; from whom we can learn nothing but their own indocility; who would teach us to scorn what in the silence of our hearts we ought to adore? and impious clubs; his revenues dilapidated plundered; his magistrates murdered; his clary proscribed, persecuted, famished; his nobility graded in their rank, undone in their fortises. fugitives in their persons; his armies comet and ruined; his whole people impoverished.c»united, dissolved; whilst through the bars of Es prison, and amidst the bayonets of his keepers, hears the tumult of two conflicting factions, equ Different from them are all the great criticks. They have taught us one essential rule. I think the excellent and philosophick artist, a true judge, as well as a perfect follower of nature, Sir Joshua Reynolds, has somewhere applied it, or something like it, in his own profession. It is this, that if ever we should find ourselves disposed not to admire those writers or artists, Livy and Virgil for instance, Raphael or Michael Angelo, whom all the learned had admired, not to follow our own fan-wicked and abandoned, who agree in principes cies, but to study them until we know how and what we ought to admire; and if we cannot arrive at this combination of admiration with knowledge, rather to believe that we are dull, than that the rest of the world has been imposed on. It is as good a rule, at least, with regard to this admired constitution. We ought to understand it according to our measure; and to venerate where we are not able presently to comprehend. Such admirers were our fathers, to whom we owe this splendid inheritance. Let us improve it with zeal, but with fear. Let us follow our ancestors, men not without a rational, though without an exclusive, confidence in themselves; who, by respecting the reason of others, who, by looking backward as well as forward, by the modesty as well as by the energy of their minds, went on, insensibly drawing this constitution nearer and nearer to its perfection, by never departing from its fundamental principles, nor introducing any amendment which had not a subsisting root in the laws, constitution, and usages of the kingdom. Let those who have the trust of political or of natural authority ever keep watch against the desperate enterprises of innovation: let even their benevolence be fortified and armed. They have before their eyes the example of a monarch, insulted, degraded, confined, deposed; his family dispersed, scattered, imprisoned; his wife insulted to his face like the vilest of the sex, by the vilest of all populace; himself three times dragged by these wretches in an infamous triumph; his children torn from him, in violation of the first right of nature, and given into the tuition of the most desperate and impious of the leaders of desperate in dispositions, and in objects, but who tear a other to pieces about the most effectual means f obtaining their common end; the one contending to preserve for a while his name, and his perso the more easily to destroy the royal authoritythe other clamouring to cut off the name, the per son, and the monarchy together, by one sacre gious execution. All this accumulation of c mity, the greatest that ever fell upon one man ba fallen upon his head, because he had left his v tues unguarded by caution; because he was taught that, where power is concerned, he who w confer benefits must take security against in titude. I have stated the calamities which have fa upon a great prince and nation, because they not alarmed at the approach of danger, and cause, what commonly happens to men surpra they lost all resource when they were caught at When I speak of danger, I certainly mean t dress myself to those who consider the prevaln of the new Whig doctrines as an evil. The Whigs of this day have before then : this Appeal, their constitutional ancestors; t have the doctors of the modern school. They choose for themselves. The author of the R tions has chosen for himself. If a new ord coming on, and all the political opinions pass away as dreams, which our ancestors worshipped as revelations, I say for him, th would rather be the last (as certainly he st least) of that race of men, than the first greatest of those who have coined to thes Whig principles from a French die, unknow the impress of our fathers in the constitution. LETTER TO A PEER OF IRELAND, ON THE PENAL LAWS AGAINST IRISH CATHOLICKS; PREVIOUS TO THE LATE REPEAL OF A PART THEREOF, IN THE SESSION OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. HELD A. D. 1782. Charles-street, London, Feb. 21, 1722. | sometimes been made before the temper of the na MY LORD, I AM obliged to your lordship for your commuication of the heads of Mr. Gardiner's bill. I ad received it, in an earlier stage of its progress, rom Mr. Braughall; and I am still in that gentlenan's debt, as I have not made him the proper eturn for the favour he has done me. Business, to hich I was more immediately called, and in which by sentiments had the weight of one vote, occupied ne every moment since I received his letter. This rst morning which I can call my own, I give with reat cheerfulness to the subject on which your ordship has done me the honour of desiring my pinion. I have read the heads of the bill, with | te amendments. Your lordship is too well acuainted with men, and with affairs, to imagine at any true judgment can be formed on the alue of a great measure of policy from the perusal fa piece of paper. At present I am much in the ark with regard to the state of the country, which he intended law is to be applied to.* It is not asy for me to determine whether or no it was ise, (for the sake of expunging the black letter flaws, which, menacing as they were in the lanuage, were every day fading into disuse,) solemnly o re-affirm the principles, and to re-enact the provisions, of a code of statutes, by which you are otally excluded from THE PRIVILEGES OF THE OMMONWEALTH, from the highest to the lowest, om the most material of the civil professions, rom the army, and even from education, where lone education is to be had. Whether this scheme of indulgence, grounded t once on contempt and jealousy, has a tendency radually to produce something better and more beral, I cannot tell, for want of having the actual map of the country. If this should be the case, it as right in you to accept it, such as it is. But if This should be one of the experiments, which have tion was ripe for a real reformation, I think it may possibly have ill effects, by disposing the penal matter in a more systematick order, and thereby fixing a permanent bar against any relief that is truly substantial. The whole merit or demerit of the measure depends upon the plans and dispositions of those by whom the act was made, concurring with the general temper of the protestants of Ireland, and their aptitude to admit in time of some part of that equality, without which you never can be FELLOW-CITIZENS. Of all this I am wholly ignorant. All my correspondence with men of publick importance in Ireland has for some time totally ceased. On the first bill for the relief of the ROMAN CATHOLICks of Ireland, I was, without any call of mine, consulted both on your side of the water and on this. On the present occasion, I have not heard a word from any man in office; and know as little of the intentions of the British government, as I know of the temper of the Irish parliament. I do not find that any opposition was made by the principal persons of the minority in the house of commons, or that any is apprehended from them in the house of lords. The whole of the difficulty seems to lie with the principal men in government, under whose protection this bill is supposed to be brought in. This violent opposition and cordial support, coming from one and the same quarter, appears to me something mysterious, and hinders me from being able to make any clear judgment of the merit of the present measure, as compared with the actual state of the country, and the general views of government, without which one can say nothing that may not be very erroneous. To look at the bill, in the abstract, it is neither more nor less than a renewed act of UNIVERSAL, UNMITIGATED, DISQUALIFICATION. INDISPENSABLE, EXCEPTIONLESS One would imagine, that a bill inflicting such a • The sketch of the bill sent to Mr. Burke, along with the re- was altered afterwards, and the clauses re-affirming the incaal of some acts, re-affirmed many others in the penal code. It pacities left out; but they all still exist, and are in full force. multitude of incapacities, had followed on the heels | those hundreds of thousands, who are denied ther of a conquest made by a very fierce enemy, under the impression of recent animosity and resentment. No man, on reading that bill, could imagine he was reading an act of amnesty and indulgence, following a recital of the good behaviour of those who are the objects of it: which recital stood at the head of the bill, as it was first introduced: but, I suppose for its incongruity with the body of the piece, was afterwards omitted.-This I say on memory. It however still recites the oath, and that catholicks ought to be considered as good and loyal subjects to his majesty, his crown and government. Then follows an universal exclusion of those GOOD and LOYAL subjects from every (even the lowest) office of trust and profit; from any vote at an election; from any privilege in a town corporate; from being even a freeman of such a corporation; from serving on grand juries; from a vote at a vestry; from having a gun in his house; from being a barrister, attorney, or solicitor, &c. &c. &c. chance in the returned fruits of their own indetry. This is the thing meant by those who luk upon the publick revenue only as a spoil; and wil naturally wish to have as few as possible co cerned in the division of the booty. If a star should be so unhappy as to think it cannot subset without such a barbarous proscription, the persas so proscribed ought to be indemnified by the mission of a large part of their taxes, by an in munity from the offices of publick burden, and by an exemption from being pressed into any military or naval service. Common sense and common justice dictate th at least, as some sort of compensation to a people for their slavery. How many families are inc pable of existing, if the little offices of the reverse and little military commissions, are denied them' To deny them at home, and to make the happe ness of acquiring some of them somewhere t felony, or high treason, is a piece of cruelty, which, till very lately, I did not suppose this capable of persisting. Formerly a similarity religion made a sort of country for a man in sos quarter or other. A refugee for religion was ap tected character. Now, the reception is coli z deed; and therefore as the asylum abroad is This has surely much more the air of a table of proscription, than an act of grace. What must we suppose the laws concerning those good subjects to have been, of which this is a relaxation? I know well that there is a cant language current, about the difference between an exclusion from employ-stroyed, the hardship at home is doubled. T ments even to the most rigorous extent, and an exclusion from the natural benefits arising from a man's own industry. I allow, that under some circumstances, the difference is very material in point of justice, and that there are considerations which may render it advisable for a wise government to keep the leading parts of every branch of civil and military administration in hands of the best trust; but a total exclusion from the commonwealth is a very different thing. When a government subsists (as governments formerly did) on an estate of its own, with but few and inconsiderable revenues drawn from the subject, then the few officers which existed in such establishments were naturally at the disposal of that government, which paid the salaries out of its own coffers; there an exclusive preference could hardly merit the name of proscription. Almost the whole produce of a man's industry at that time remained in his own purse to maintain his family. But times alter, and the whole estate of government is from private contribution. When a very great portion of the labour of individuals goes to the state, and is by the state again refunded to individuals, through the medium of offices, and in this circuitous progress from the private to the publick, and from the publick again to the private fund, the families from whom the revenue is taken are indemnified, and an equitable balance between the government and the subject is established. But if a great body of the people, who contribute to this state lottery, are excluded from all the prizes, the stopping the circulation with regard to them may be a most cruel hardship, amounting in effect to being double and treble taxed; and it will be felt as such to the very quick by all the families high and low of hardship is the more intolerable, because the pr this |