In the second year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth were enacted several limitations in the acquisition or the retaining of property, which had so far as regarded any general principles-hitherto remained untouched under all changes.

These Bills met no opposition either in the Irish Parliament or in the English Council, except from private agents, who were little attended to; and they passed into laws with the highest and most general applauses, as all such things are, in the beginning, not as a system of persecution, but as masterpieces of the most subtle and refined politics. And to say the truth, these laws-at first view-have rather an appearance of a plan of vexatious litigation and crooked law chicanery, than of a direct and sanguinary attack upon the rights of private conscience, because they did not affect life, at least with regard to the laity; and making the Catholic opinions rather the subject of civil regulations than of criminal prosecutions, to those who are not lawyers and read these laws, they only appear to be a species of jargon. For the execution of criminal law has always a certain appearance of violence. ing exercised directly on the persons of the supposed offenders, and commonly executed in the face of the public, such executions are apt to excite sentiments of pity for the sufferers, and indignation against those who are employed in such cruelties-being seen as single acts of cruelty, rather than as ill general principles of government. But the operation of the laws

Be

in question being such as common feeling brings home to every man's bosom, they operate in a sort of comparative silence and obscurity; and though their cruelty is exceedingly great, it is never seen in a single exertion, and always escapes commiseration, being scarce known, except to those who view them in a general-which is always a cold and phlegmatic -light. The first of these laws being made with so general a satisfaction, as the chief governors found that such things were extremely acceptable to the leading people in that country, they were willing enough to gratify them with the ruin of their fellowcitizens; they were not sorry to divert their attention from other inquiries, and to keep them fixed to this, as if this had been the only real object of their national politics; and for many years there was no speech from the throne which did not, with great appearance of seriousness, recommend the passing of such laws; and scarce a session went over without in effect passing some of them, until they have by degrees grown to be the most considerable head in the Irish Statute Book. At the same time, giving a temporary and occasional mitigation to the severity of some of the harshest of those laws, they appeared in some sort the protectors of those whom they were in reality destroying by the establishment of general constitutions against them. At length, however, the policy of this expedient is worn out; the passions of men are cooled; those laws begin to disclose themselves, and to pro

duce effects very different from those which were promised in making them; for crooked counsels are ever unwise; and nothing can be more absurd and dangerous than to tamper with the natural foundations of society, in hopes of keeping it up by certain contrivances.

II.

A LETTER TO SIR CHARLES BINGHAM, Bart., on the IRISH ABSENTEE TAX.1

DEAR SIR,

I AM much flattered by your very obliging letter, and the rather because it promises an opening to our future correspondence. This may be my only indemnification for very great losses. One of the most odious parts of the proposed Absentee Tax is its tendency to separate friends, and to make as ugly breaches in private society as it must make in the unity of the great political body. I am sure that much of the satisfaction of some circles in London will be lost by it. Do you think that our friend Mrs. Vesey will suffer her husband to vote for a tax that is to destroy the evenings at Bolton Row? I trust we shall have other supporters of the same sex,

1 From authentic documents found with the copy of this letter among Mr. Burke's papers, it appears that in the year 1773 a project of imposing a tax upon all proprietors of landed estates in Ireland, whose ordinary residence should be in Great Britain, had been adopted and avowed by his Majesty's ministers at that time. A remonstrance against this measure, as highly unjust and impolitic, was presented to the ministers by several of the principal Irish absentees, and the project was subsequently abandoned.

equally powerful and equally deserving to be so, who will not abandon the common cause of their own liberties and our satisfactions. We shall be barbarised

on both sides of the water if we do not see one another

now and then. We shall sink into surly, brutish Johns, and you will degenerate into wild Irish. It is impossible that we should be the wiser or the more agreeable; certainly we shall not love one another the better for this forced separation which our ministers, who have already done so much for the dissolution of every other sort of good connection, are now meditating for the further improvement of this too well united empire. Their next step will be to encourage all the colonies-about thirty separate Governments-to keep their people from all intercourse with each other and with the mother country. A gentleman of New York or Barbadoes will be as much gazed at as a strange animal from Nova Zembla or Otaheite, and those rogues, the travellers, will tell us what stories they please about poor old Ireland.

In all seriousness (though I am a great deal more than half serious in what I have been saying), I look upon this projected tax in a very evil light. I think it is not advisable; I am sure it is not necessary; and as it is not a mere matter of finance, but involves a political question of much importance, I consider the principle and precedent as far worse than the thing itself. You are too kind in imagining I can suggest anything new upon the subject. The objections to it