doubt whether you might quite certainly reckon | n obtaining an aid of force from hence, for the pport of that system. We might extend your istractions to this country, by taking part in them. ngland will be indisposed, I suspect, to send an my for the conquest of Ireland. What was done 1782 is a decisive proof of her sentiments of stice and moderation. She will not be fond of aking another American war in Ireland. The inciples of such a war would but too much remble the former one. The well-disposed and e ill-disposed in England would (for different asons perhaps) be equally averse to such an enrprise. The confiscations, the publick auctions, e private grants, the plantations, the transplantaons, which formerly animated so many advenrers, even among sober citizens, to such Irish peditions, and which possibly might have aniited some of them to the American, can have existence in the case that we suppose. Let us form a supposition (no foolish or unounded supposition) that in an age when men infinitely more disposed to heat themselves h political than religious controversies, the forr should entirely prevail, as we see that in ne places they have prevailed, over the latter; I that the catholicks of Ireland, from the court> paid them on the one hand, and the high tone refusal on the other, should, in order to enter > all the rights of subjects, all become protestdissenters; and as the other do, take all your hs. They would all obtain their civil objects; the change, for any thing I know to the cony, (in the dark as I am about the protestant enting tenets,) might be of use to the health of r souls. But, what security our constitution, hurch or state, could derive from that event, innot possibly discern. Depend upon it, it is rue as nature is true, that if you force them of the religion of habit, education, or opinion, not to yours they will ever go. Shaken in r minds, they will go to that where the dogmas fewest; where they are the most uncertain; re they lead them the least to a consideration what they have abandoned. They will go to uniformly democratick system, to whose first ements they owed their emancipation. I remend you seriously to turn this in your mind. eve that it requires your best and maturest ghts. Take what course you please-union o union; whether the people remain cathos or become protestant dissenters, sure it is, the present state of monopoly cannot con you 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 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. 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 degrees. We 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 up number against property. The numbers ought never to be neglected; because (besides what is due to them as men) collectively, though not individually, they have great property: they ought to have therefore protection: they ought to have security they ought to have even consideration: but they ought not to predominate. | holders, and an aristocratick representation, at the choice of the Crown, neither was the choice of the Crown, nor the election of the landholders, Lite by a consideration of religion. We had no dres: for the protestant church, which we settled the because we permitted the French catholicks, 2 the utmost latitude of the description, to be fre subjects. They are good subjects, I have doubt; but I will not allow that any French (a 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 c sertation. I might have done it earlier and better, I might have been more forcible and more clear, if I had not been interrupted as I have been; and this obliges me not to write to you in my own hand. Though my hand but signs it, my heart goes with what I have written. Since I could think at all, those have been my thoughts. You know that thirty-two years ago they were as fully matured in my mind as they are now. A letter of mine to Lord Kenmare, though not by my desire, and full of lesser mistakes, has been printed in Dublin. It was written ten or twelve years ago, at the time when I began the employment, which I have not yet finished, in favour of another distressed people, injured by those who have vanquished them, or stolen a dominion over them. | It contained my sentiments then; you will see how far they accord with my sentiments now. Time has more and more confirmed me in them all. The present circumstances fix them deeper in my mind. 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 the advantages or distinctions, of any kind, which they enjoyed under their former monarchy. It is true, that some people, and amongst them one eminent 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 zens than the Irish of the same communka P You hated the old system as early as I did. 1first juvenile lance was broken against that I think you were even the first who attacked grim phantom. You have an exceedingly good derstanding, very good humour, and the best b in the world. The dictates of that tempera that heart, as well as the policy pointed o that understanding, led you to abhor the old You abhorred it, as I did, for its vicious p tion. For I must do it justice: it was a c system, full of coherence and consistency; digested and well composed in all its parts. It a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; a as well fitted for the oppression, impoverish. and degradation of a people, and the debaser in them, of human nature itself, as ever prov from the perverted ingenuity of man. It is at humiliating enough, that we are doubtful o effect of the medicines we compound. We sure of our poisons. My opinion which I heartily agree with those that ar the old code) that it was so constructed, ever c here was once a breach in any essential part of it; he ruin of the whole, or nearly of the whole, was t some time or other, a certainty. For that reaon I honour, and shall for ever honour and love ou, and those who first caused it to stagger, crack, nd gape.-Others may finish; the beginners have he glory; and, take what part you please at this our, (I think you will take the best,) your first ervices will never be forgotten by a grateful couny. Adieu! Present my best regards to those I now, 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. HINTS FOR A MEMORIAL TO BE DELIVERED TO MONSIEUR DE M. M. WRITTEN IN THE EARLY PART OF 1791. THE king, my master, from his sincere desire of keeping up a good correspondence with his most Christian majesty, and the French nation, has for some time beheld with concern the condition into which that sovereign and nation have fallen. Notwithstanding the reality and the warmth of those sentiments, His Britannick Majesty has hitherto forborne in any manner to take part in their affairs, in hopes that the common interest of king and subjects would render all parties sensible of the necessity of settling their government, and their freedom, upon principles of moderation; as the only means of securing permanence to both these blessings, as well as internal and external tranquillity, to the kingdom of France, and to all Europe. His Britannick Majesty finds, to his great regret, that his hopes have not been realized. He finds, that confusions and disorders have rather encreased than diminished, and that they now threaten to proceed to dangerous extremities. His Majesty, having always thought it his re est glory, that he rules over a people perfe and solidly, because soberly, rationally, and gally, free, can never be supposed to proceed a offering thus his royal mediation, but with an Laffected desire, and full resolution, to consider settlement of a free constitution in France, as very basis of any agreement between the sovere and those of his subjects who are unhappy variance with him; to guarantee it to them, should be desired, in the most solemn and ad tick manner, and to do all that in him lies t cure the like guarantee from other powers. His Britannick Majesty, in the same man assures the most Christian king, that he k too well, and values too highly, what is due t dignity and rights of crowned heads, and to * implied faith of treaties which have always made with the Crown of France, ever to any proposition by which that monarchy shal despoiled of all its rights, so essential for the port of the consideration of the prince, and concord and welfare of the people. listen t In this situation of things, the same regard to a neighbouring sovereign living in friendship with Great Britain, the same spirit of good-will to the If, unfortunately, a due attention should nTM § kingdom of France, the same regard to the gene-paid to these His Majesty's benevolent and ral tranquillity, which have caused him to view, bourly offers, or, if any circumstances should with concern, the growth and continuance of the vent the most Christian king from acceding » present disorders, have induced the King of Great His Majesty has no doubt he is well dispose. Britain to interpose his good offices towards a re-do) to this healing mediation in favour of r concilement of those unhappy differences. This and all his subjects, His Majesty has comma His Majesty does with the most cordial regard to me to take leave of this court, as not concer, "the good of all descriptions concerned, and with it to be suitable to the dignity of his crown, the most perfect sincerity, wholly removing from to what he owes to his faithful people, any his royal mind all memory of every circumstance to keep a publick minister at the court of a se which might impede him in the execution of a reign who is not in possession of his own liberty plan of benevolence which he has so much at heart. THOUGHTS ON FRENCH AFFAIRS, &c. &c. WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 1791. In all our transactions with France, and at all | periods, we have treated with that state on the footing of a monarchy. Monarchy was considered in all the external relations of that kingdom with every power in Europe as its legal and constitutional government, and that in which alone its federal capacity was vested. Montmorin's pended, by their authority, from his government. Under equally notorious constraint, and under menaces of total deposition, he has been compelled to accept what they call a constitution, and to agree to whatever else the usurped power, which holds him in confinement, thinks proper to impose. His next brother, who had fled with him, and It is not yet a year since Monsieur his third brother, who had fled before him, all the de Montmorin formally, and with as princes of his blood, who remained faithful to him, little respect as can be imagined to the king, and and the flower of his magistracy, his clergy, and to all crowned heads, announced a total revolution his nobility, continue in foreign countries, protestin that country. He has informed the British ing against all acts done by him in his present ministry, that its frame of government is wholly situation, on the grounds upon which he had himaltered; that he is one of the ministers of the new self protested against them at the time of his flight; system; and, in effect, that the king is no longer with this addition, that they deny his very comhis master (nor does he even call him such) but petence (as on good grounds they may) to abrothe "first of the ministers," in the new system. gate the royalty, or the ancient constitutional orAcceptance of The second notification was that of ders of the kingdom. In this protest they are the constitu- the king's acceptance of the new con- joined by three hundred of the late assembly stitution; accompanied with fanfaro-itself, and, in effect, by a great part of the French nades in the modern style of the French bureaus; nation. The new government (so far as the people things which have much more the air and character dare to disclose their sentiments) is disdained, I of the saucy declamations of their clubs, than the am persuaded, by the greater number; who, as M. tone of regular office. de la Fayette complains, and as the truth is, have declined to take any share in the new elections to the National Assembly, either as candidates or electors. tion ratified. It has not been very usual to notify to foreign courts any thing concerning the internal arrangements of any state. In the present case, the circumstance of these two notifications, with the observations with which they are attended, does not leave it in the choice of the sovereigns of Christendom to appear ignorant either of this French Revolution, or (what is more important) of its principles. In this state of things, (that is, in the case of a divided kingdom,) by the law of nations, Great Britain, like every other power, is free to take any part she pleases. She may decline, with more or less formality, according to her discretion, to acknowledge this new system; or she may recognise it as a government de facto, setting aside all discussion of its original legality, and considering the ancient monarchy as at an end. The law of nations leaves our court open to its choice. We have no direction but what is found in the well understood policy of the king and kingdom. We know, that, very soon after this manifesto of Monsieur de Montmorin, the king of France, in whose name it was made, found himself obliged to fly, with his whole family; leaving behind him a declaration, in which he disavows and annuls that constitution, as having been the effect of force on his person and usurpation on his authority. It is This declaration of a new species of government, equally notorious that this unfortunate prince was, on new principles, (such it professes itself to be,) with many circumstances of insult and outrage, is a real crisis in the politicks of Europe. The brought back prisoner, by a deputation of the pre-conduct which prudence ought to dictate to Great tended National Assembly, and afterwards sus- Britain, will not depend (as hitherto our connexion • See Vattel, b ii. c. 4. sect. 56. and b. iii. c. 18. sect. 206. |