structor, Time, has not yet been able to teach the grand lesson of his own value, and that, in every question of moral and political prudence, it is the choice of the moment which renders the measure serviceable or useless, noxious or salutary!

In the Catholic question I considered only one point: Was it, at the time, and in the circumstances, a measure which tended to promote the concord of the citizens? I have no difficulty in saying it was, and as little in saying that the present concord of the citizens was worth buying, at a critical season, by granting a few capacities, which probably no one man now living is likely to be served or hurt by. When any man tells you and me, that, if these places were left in the discretion of a Protestant crown, and these memberships in the discretion. of Protestant electors or patrons, we should have a Popish official system, and a Popish representation, capable of overturning the Establishment, he only insults our understandings. When any man tells this to Catholics, he insults their understandings, and he galls their feelings. It is not the question of the places and seats, it is the real hostile disposition and the pretended fears, that leave stings in the minds of the people. I really thought that in the total of the late circumstances, with regard to persons, to things, to principles, and to measures, was to be found a conjuncture favorable to the introduction and to the perpetuation of a general harmony, producing a general strength, which to that hour Ireland was never so happy as to enjoy. My sanguine hopes are blasted, and I must consign my feelings on that terrible disappointment to the same patience in which I have been obliged to bury the vexation I suffered

on the defeat of the other great, just, and honorable causes in which I have had some share, and which have given more of dignity than of peace and advantage to a long, laborious life. Though, perhaps, a want of success might be urged as a reason for making me doubt of the justice of the part I have taken, yet, until I have other lights than one side of the debate has furnished me, I must see things, and feel them too, as I see and feel them. I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland, — or of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia,-or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe and the state of human society itself. The last is the greatest evil. But it readily combines with the others, and flows from them. Whatever breeds discontent at this time will produce that great master-mischief most infallibly. Whatever tends to persuade the people that the few, called by whatever name you please, religious or political, are of opinion that their interest is not compatible with that of the many, is a great point gained to Jacobinism. Whatever tends to irritate the talents of a country, which have at all times, and at these particularly, a mighty influence on the public mind, is of infinite service to that formidable cause. Unless where Heaven has mingled uncommon ingredients of virtue in the composition,- quos meliore luto finxit præcordia Titan, - talents naturally gravitate to Jacobinism. Whatever ill-humors are afloat in the state, they will be sure to discharge themselves in a mingled torrent in the Cloaca Maxima of Jacobinism. Therefore people ought well to look about them. First, the physicians are to take care that they do

nothing to irritate this epidemical distemper. It is a foolish thing to have the better of the patient in a dispute. The complaint or its cause ought to be removed, and wise and lenient arts ought to precede the measures of vigor. They ought to be the ultima, not the prima, not the tota ratio of a wise government. God forbid, that, on a worthy occasion, authority should want the means of force, or the disposition to use it! But where a prudent and enlarged policy does not precede it, and attend it too, where the hearts of the better sort of people do not go with the hands of the soldiery, you may call your Constitution what you will, in effect it will consist of three parts, (orders, if you please,) cavalry, infantry, and artillery, and of nothing else or better. I agree with you in your dislike of the discourses in Francis Street: but I like as little some of those in College Green. I am even less pleased with the temper that predominated in the latter, as better things might have been expected in the regular family mansion of public discretion than in a new and hasty assembly of unexperienced men, congregated under circumstances of no small irritation. After people have taken your tests, prescribed by yourselves as proofs of their allegiance, to be marked as enemies, traitors, or at best as suspected and dangerous persons, and that they are not to be believed on their oaths, we are not to be surprised, if they fall into a passion, and talk as men in a passion do, intemperately and idly.

The worst of the matter is this: you are partly leading, partly driving into Jacobinism that description of your people whose religious principles, church polity, and habitual discipline might make them an

invincible dike against that inundation. This you have a thousand mattocks and pickaxes lifted up to demolish. You make a sad story of the Pope. O seri studiorum! It will not be difficult to get many called Catholics to laugh at this fundamental part of their religion. Never doubt it. You have succeeded in part, and you may succeed completely. But in the present state of men's minds and affairs, do not flatter yourselves that they will piously look to the head of our Church in the place of that Pope whom you make them forswear, and out of all reverence to whom you bully and rail and buffoon them. Perhaps you may succeed in the same manner with all the other tenets of doctrine and usages of discipline amongst the Catholics; but what security have you, that, in the temper and on the principles on which they have made this change, they will stop at the exact sticking-places you have marked in your articles? You have no security for anything, but that they will become what are called Franco-Jacobins, and reject the whole togeth

er.

No converts now will be made in a considerable number from one of our sects to the other upon a really religious principle. Controversy moves in another direction.

Next to religion, property is the great point of Jacobin attack. Here many of the debaters in your majority, and their writers, have given the Jacobins all the assistance their hearts can wish. When the Catholics desire places and seats, you tell them that this is only a pretext, (though Protestants might suppose it just possible for men to like good places and snug boroughs for their own merits,) but that their real view is, to strip Protestants of their property To my certain knowledge, till those Jacobin

lectures were opened in the House of Commons, they never dreamt of any such thing; but now the great professors may stimulate them to inquire (on the new principles) into the foundation of that property, and of all property. If you treat men as robbers, why, robbers, sooner or later, they will become.

A third point of Jacobin attack is on old traditionary constitutions. You are apprehensive for yours, which leans from its perpendicular, and does not stand firm on its theory. I like Parliamentary reforms as little as any man who has boroughs to sell for money, or for peerages in Ireland. But it passes my comprehension, in what manner it is that men can be reconciled to the practical merits of a constitution, the theory of which is in litigation, by being practically excluded from any of its advantages. Let us put ourselves in the place of these people, and try an experiment of the effects of such a procedure on our own minds. Unquestionably, we should be perfectly satisfied, when we were told that Houses of Parliament, instead of being places of refuge for popular liberty, were citadels for keeping us in order as a conquered people. These things play the Jacobin game to a nicety.

Indeed, my dear Sir, there is not a single particular in the Francis-Street declamations, which has not, to your and to my certain knowledge, been taught by the jealous ascendants, sometimes by doctrine, sometimes by example, always by provocation. Remember the whole of 1781 and 1782, in Parliament and out of Parliament; at this very day, and in the worst acts and designs, observe the tenor of the objections with which the College-Green orators of the ascendency reproach the Catholics. You have ob