A LETTER, &c.

MY DEAR SIR,

Y

.

our remembrance of me, with fentiments of fo much kindness, has given me the most fincere fatisfaction. It perfectly agrees with the friendly and hofpitable reception which my fon and I received from you, fome time fince, when after an absence of twenty-two years, I had the happiness of embracing you, among my few furviving friends.

I really imagined that I fhould not again intereft my? felf in any public bufinefs. I had, to the best of my moderate faculties, paid my club to the fociety, which I was born in fome way or other to serve; and I thought I had a right to put on my nightgown and flippers, and wish a cheerful evening to the good company I must leave behind. But if our refolutions of vigour and exertion are so often broken or procrastinated in the execution, I think we may be excused, if we are not very punctual in fulfilling our engagements to indolence and inactivity. I have indeed no power of action; and am almost a cripple, even with regard to thinking; but you defcend with force into the ftagnant pool; and you caufe fuch a fermentation, as to cure at least one impotent creature of his lameness, though it cannot enable him either to run or to wrestle.

You fee by the paper I take † that I am likely to be long, with malice prepenfe. You have brought under my view a fubject, always difficult, at prefent critical. It has filled my thoughts, which I wish to lay open to you with the clearness and fimplicity which your friendship demands from me. I

thank

The letter is written on folio fheets.

thank you for the communication of

your ideas. ideas. I fhould be ftill more pleased if they had been more your own. What you hint, I believe to be the cafe ; that if you had not deferred to the judgment of others, our opinions would not differ more materially at this day, than they did when we used to confer on the fame fubject, fo many years ago. If I ftill perfevere in my old opinions, it is no fmall comfort to me, that it is not with regard to doctrines properly yours, that I discover my indocility.

The cafe upon which your letter of the 10th of December turns, is hardly before me with precifion enough, to enable me to form any very certain judgment upon it. It feems to be fome plan of further indulgence propofed for Catholics of Ireland. You obferve, that your general principles are not changed, but that times and circumftances are altered." I perfectly agree with you, that times and circumstances, confidered with reference to the public, ought very much to govern our conduct, though I am far from fighting, when applied with difcretion to those circumftances, general principles and maxims of policy. I cannot help obferving, however, that you have faid rather lefs upon the inapplicability of your own old principles to the circumftances that are likely to influence your conduct against thefe principles, than of the general maxims of ftate, which I can very readily believe not to have great weight with you perfonally.

In my prefent ftate of imperfect information, you will pardon the errors into which I may eafily fall. The principles you lay down are, "that the "Roman Catholics fhould enjoy every thing under the "ftate, but should not be the state itself." And you add, "that when you exclude them from being a part of the ftate, you rather conform to the fpirit "of the age, than to any abftract doctrine," but you confider the conftitution as already eftablished-that

.

our

our state is protestant. "It was declared fo at the "revolution. It was fo provided in the acts for fet"tling the fucceffion of the crown:-the king's co

66

ronation oath was enjoined, in order to keep it fo. "The king, as first magiftrate of the ftate, is obliged to take the oath of abjurationt, and to fubfcribe "the declaration; and, by laws fubfequent, every "other magiftrate and member of the ftate, legiflative "and executive, are bound under the fame obligation."

As to the plan to which these maxims are applied, I cannot fpeak, as I told you, pofitively about it. Because, neither from your letter, nor from any information I have been able to collect, do I find any thing fettled, either on the part of the Roman Catholics themselves, or on that of any perfons who may wish to conduct their affairs in parliament. But if I have leave to conjecture, fomething is in agitation towards admitting them, under certain qualifications, to have fome share in the election of members of parliament. This I understand is the fcheme of thofe who are entitled to come within your defcription of perfons of confideration, property, and character: and firmly attached to the king and conftitution as by "law established, with a grateful fenfe of your "former conceffions, and a patient reliance on the "benignity of parliament, for the further mitigation "of the laws that ftill affect them."-As to the low, thoughtlefs, wild and profligate, who have joined themselves with thofe of other profeffions, but of the fame character; you are not to imagine, that, for a moment, I can fuppofe them to be met, with any thing else than the manly and enlightened energy of a firm government, supported by the united efforts of all virtuous men, if ever their proceedings fhould become fo confiderable as

A fmall errour of fact as to the abjuration oath; but of no im portance in the argument,

to

to demand its notice. I really think that fuch affociations fhould be crufhed in their very very com

mencement.

Setting, therefore, this cafe out of the question, it becomes an object of very ferious confideration, whether, because wicked men of various descriptions are engaged in feditious courfes, the rational, fober, and valuable part of one defcription should not be indulged in their fober and rational expectations? You, who have looked deeply into the spirit of the popery laws, must be perfectly fenfible, that a great part of the prefent mifchief, which we abhor in common (if it at all exifts) has arifen from them. Their declared object was to reduce the Catholics of Ireland to a miserable populace, without property, without eftimation, without education. The profeffed object was to deprive the few men who, in spite of those laws, might hold or obtain any property amongst them, of all fort of influence or authority over the reft. They divided the nation into two diftinct bodies, without common intereft, fympathy, or connexion. One of these bodies was to poffefs all the franchifes, all the property, all the education; the other was to be compofed of drawers of water and cutters of turf for them. Are we to be aftonished, when, by the efforts of fo much violence in conqueft, and fo much policy in regulation, continued without intermiffion for near an hundred years, we had reduced them to a mob; that whenever they came to act at all, many of them would act exactly like a mob, without temper, measure, or forefight? Surely it might be just now a matter of temperate difcuffion, whether you ought not apply a remedy to the real cause of the evil. If the diforder you fpeak of be real and confiderable, you ought to raife an ariftocratic intereft; that is, an intereft of property and education amongst them and to ftrengthen by every prudent means, the authority and influence of men

of

of that description. It will deferve your best thoughts, to examine whether this can be done without giving fuch perfons the means of demonftrating to the reft, that fomething more is to be got by their temperate conduct, than can be expected from the wild and fenfelefs projects of thofe, who do not belong to their body, who have no intereft in their well being, and only wish to make them the dupes of their turbulent ambition.

If the abfurd perfons you mention find no way of providing for liberty, but by overturning this happy conftitution, and introducing a frantic democracy, let us take care how we prevent better people from any rational expectations of partaking in the benefits of that conftitution as it ftands. The maxims you establish cut the matter fhort. They have no fort of connexion with the good or the ill behaviour of the perfons who feek relief, or with the proper or improper means by which they feek it. They form a perpetual bar to all pleas and to all expec

tations.

You begin by afferting, that" the Catholics ought

to enjoy all things under the ftate, but that they "ought not to be the state." A pofition which, I believe, in the latter part of it, and in the latitude there expreffed, no man of common fenfe has ever thought proper to difpute: because the contrary implies, that the ftate ought to be in then exclufively. But before you have finished the line, you expreis yourself as if the other member of your propofition, namely, that "they ought not to be a part of the ftate,” were neceffarily included in your first-Whereas I conceive it to be as different, as a part is from the whole; that is juft as different as poffible. I know indeed, that it is common with thofe who talk very differently from you, that is with heat and animofity, to confound thofe things, and to argue the admiflion of the Catholics into any, however minute and fubordinate