The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume IV Part 14

First, I cannot possibly confound in my mind all the things which were done at the Revolution with the _principles_ of the Revolution. As in most great changes, many things were done from the necessities of the time, well or ill understood, from pa.s.sion or from vengeance, which were not only not perfectly agreeable to its principles, but in the most direct contradiction to them. I shall not think that the _deprivation of some millions of people of all the rights of citizens, and all interest in the Const.i.tution, in and to which they were born_, was a thing conformable to the _declared principles_ of the Revolution. This I am sure is true relatively to England (where the operation of these _anti-principles_ comparatively were of little extent); and some of our late laws, in repealing acts made immediately after the Revolution, admit that some things then done were not done in the true spirit of the Revolution. But the Revolution operated differently in England and Ireland, in many, and these essential particulars. Supposing the principles to have been altogether the same in both kingdoms, by the application of those principles to very different objects the whole spirit of the system was changed, not to say reversed. In England it was the struggle of the _great body_ of the people for the establishment of their liberties, against the efforts of a very _small faction_, who would have oppressed them. In Ireland it was the establishment of the power of the smaller number, at the expense of the civil liberties and properties of the far greater part, and at the expense of the political liberties of the whole. It was, to say the truth, not a revolution, but a conquest: which is not to say a great deal in its favor. To insist on everything done in Ireland at the Revolution would be to insist on the severe and jealous policy of a conqueror, in the crude settlement of his new acquisition, as _a permanent_ rule for its future government. This no power, in no country that ever I heard of, has done or professed to do,--except in Ireland; where it is done, and possibly by some people will be professed. Time has, by degrees, in all other places and periods, blended and coalited the conquered with the conquerors. So, after some time, and after one of the most rigid conquests that we read of in history, the Normans softened into the English. I wish you to turn your recollection to the fine speech of Cerealis to the Gauls, made to dissuade them from revolt. Speaking of the Romans,--"_Nos_ quamvis toties lacessiti, jure victoriae id solum vobis addidimus, quo pacem tueremur: nam neque quies gentium sine armis, neque arma sine stipendiis, neque stipendia sine tributis haberi queant. _Caetera in communi sita sunt_: ipsi plerumque nostris exercitibus _praesidetis_: ipsi has aliasque provincias _regitis: nil separatum clausumve_. Proinde pacem et urbem, quam _victores victique eodem jure obtinemus_, amate, colite." You will consider whether the arguments used by that Roman to these Gauls would apply to the case in Ireland,--and whether you could use so plausible a preamble to any severe warning you might think it proper to hold out to those who should resort to sedition, instead of supplication, to obtain any object that they may pursue with the governing power.

For a much longer period than that which had sufficed to blend the Romans with the nation to which of all others they were the most adverse, the Protestants settled in Ireland considered themselves in no other light than that of a sort of a colonial garrison, to keep the natives in subjection to the other state of Great Britain. The whole spirit of the Revolution in Ireland was that of not the mildest conqueror. In truth, the spirit of those proceedings did not commence at that era, nor was religion of any kind their primary object. What was done was not in the spirit of a contest between two religious factions, but between two adverse nations. The statutes of Kilkenny show that the spirit of the Popery laws, and some even of their actual provisions, as applied between Englishry and Irishry, had existed in that hara.s.sed country before the words _Protestant_ and _Papist_ were heard of in the world. If we read Baron Finglas, Spenser, and Sir John Davies, we cannot miss the true genius and policy of the English government there before the Revolution, as well as during the whole reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Sir John Davies boasts of the benefits received by the natives, by extending to them the English law, and turning the whole kingdom into shire ground. But the appearance of things alone was changed. The original scheme was never deviated from for a single hour. Unheard-of confiscations were made in the northern parts, upon grounds of plots and conspiracies, never proved upon their supposed authors. The war of chicane succeeded to the war of arms and of hostile statutes; and a regular series of operations was carried on, particularly from Chichester's time, in the ordinary courts of justice, and by special commissions and inquisitions,--first under pretence of tenures, and then of t.i.tles in the crown, for the purpose of the total extirpation of the interest of the natives in their own soil,--until this species of subtle ravage, being carried to the last excess of oppression and insolence under Lord Strafford, it kindled the flames of that rebellion which broke out in 1641. By the issue of that war, by the turn which the Earl of Clarendon gave to things at the Restoration, and by the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691, the ruin of the native Irish, and, in a great measure, too, of the first races of the English, was completely accomplished. The new English interest was settled with as solid a stability as anything in human affairs can look for. All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression, which were made after the last event, were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon and were not at all afraid to provoke. They were not the effect of their fears, but of their security. They who carried on this system looked to the irresistible force of Great Britain for their support in their acts of power. They were quite certain that no complaints of the natives would be heard on this side of the water with any other sentiments than those of contempt and indignation. Their cries served only to augment their torture. Machines which could answer their purposes so well must be of an excellent contrivance. Indeed, in England, the double name of the complainants, Irish and Papists, (it would be hard to say which singly was the most odious,) shut up the hearts of every one against them. Whilst that temper prevailed, (and it prevailed in all its force to a time within our memory,) every measure was pleasing and popular just in proportion as it tended to hara.s.s and ruin a set of people who were looked upon as enemies to G.o.d and man, and, indeed, as a race of bigoted savages who were a disgrace to human nature itself.

However, as the English in Ireland began to be domiciliated, they began also to recollect that they had a country. The _English interest_, at first by faint and almost insensible degrees, but at length openly and avowedly, became an _independent Irish interest_,--full as independent as it could ever have been if it had continued in the persons of the native Irish; and it was maintained with more skill and more consistency than probably it would have been in theirs. With their views, the _Anglo-Irish_ changed their maxims: it was necessary to demonstrate to the whole people that there was something, at least, of a common interest, combined with the independency, which was to become the object of common exertions. The mildness of government produced the first relaxation towards the Irish; the necessities, and, in part, too, the temper that predominated at this great change, produced the second and the most important of these relaxations. English government and Irish legislature felt jointly the propriety of this measure. The Irish Parliament and nation became independent.

The true revolution to you, that which most intrinsically and substantially resembled the English Revolution of 1688, was the Irish Revolution of 1782. The Irish Parliament of 1782 bore little resemblance to that which sat in that kingdom after the period of the first of these revolutions. It bore a much nearer resemblance to that which sat under King James. The change of the Parliament in 1782 from the character of the Parliament which, as a token of its indignation, had burned all the journals indiscriminately of the former Parliament in the Council-Chamber, was very visible. The address of King William's Parliament, the Parliament which a.s.sembled after the Revolution, amongst other causes of complaint (many of them sufficiently just) complains of the repeal by their predecessors of Poynings's law,--no absolute idol with the Parliament of 1782.

Great Britain, finding the Anglo-Irish highly animated with a spirit which had indeed shown itself before, though with little energy and many interruptions, and therefore suffered a mult.i.tude of uniform precedents to be established against it, acted, in my opinion, with the greatest temperance and wisdom. She saw that the disposition of the _leading part_ of the nation would not permit them to act any longer the part of a _garrison_. She saw that true policy did not require that they ever should have appeared in that character; or if it had done so formerly, the reasons had now ceased to operate. She saw that the Irish of her race were resolved to build their Const.i.tution and their politics upon another bottom. With those things under her view, she instantly complied with the whole of your demands, without any reservation whatsoever. She surrendered that boundless superiority, for the preservation of which, and the acquisition, she had supported the English colonies in Ireland for so long a time, and at so vast an expense (according to the standard of those ages) of her blood and treasure.

When we bring before us the matter which history affords for our selection, it is not improper to examine the spirit of the several precedents which are candidates for our choice. Might it not be as well for your statesmen, on the other side of the water, to take an example from this latter and surely more conciliatory revolution, as a pattern for your conduct towards your own fellow-citizens, than from that of 1688, when a paramount sovereignty over both you and them was more loftily claimed and more sternly exerted than at any former or at any subsequent period? Great Britain in 1782 rose above the vulgar ideas of policy, the ordinary jealousies of state, and all the sentiments of national pride and national ambition. If she had been more disposed (than, I thank G.o.d for it, she was) to listen to the suggestions of pa.s.sion than to the dictates of prudence, she might have urged the principles, the maxims, the policy, the practice of the Revolution, against the demands of the leading description in Ireland, with full as much plausibility and full as good a grace as any amongst them can possibly do against the supplications of so vast and extensive a description of their own people.

A good deal, too, if the spirit of domination and exclusion had prevailed in England, might have been excepted against some of the means then employed in Ireland, whilst her claims were in agitation. They were at least as much out of ordinary course as those which are now objected against admitting your people to any of the benefits of an English Const.i.tution. Most certainly, neither with you nor here was any one ignorant of what was at that time said, written, and done. But on all sides we separated the means from the end: and we separated the cause of the moderate and rational from the ill-intentioned and seditious, which on such occasions are so frequently apt to march together. At that time, on your part, you were not afraid to review what was done at the Revolution of 1688, and what had been continued during the subsequent flourishing period of the British empire. The change then made was a great and fundamental alteration. In the execution, it was an operose business on both sides of the water. It required the repeal of several laws, the modification of many, and a new course to be given to an infinite number of legislative, judicial, and official practices and usages in both kingdoms. This did not frighten any of us. You are now asked to give, in some moderate measure, to your fellow-citizens, what Great Britain gave to you without any measure at all. Yet, notwithstanding all the difficulties at the time, and the apprehensions which some very well-meaning people entertained, through the admirable temper in which this revolution (or restoration in the nature of a revolution) was conducted in both kingdoms, it has. .h.i.therto produced no inconvenience to either; and I trust, with the continuance of the same temper, that it never will. I think that this small, inconsiderable change, (relative to an exclusive statute not made at the Revolution,) for restoring the people to the benefits from which the green soreness of a civil war had not excluded them, will be productive of no sort of mischief whatsoever. Compare what was done in 1782 with what is wished in 1792; consider the spirit of what has been done at the several periods of reformation; and weigh maturely whether it be exactly true that conciliatory concessions are of good policy only in discussions between nations, but that among descriptions in the same nation they must always be irrational and dangerous. What have you suffered in your peace, your prosperity, or, in what ought ever to be dear to a nation, your glory, by the last act by which you took the property of that people under the protection of the _laws_? What reasons have you to dread the consequences of admitting the people possessing that property to some share in the protection of the _Const.i.tution_?

I do not mean to trouble you with anything to remove the objections, I will not call them arguments, against this measure, taken from a ferocious hatred to all that numerous description of Christians. It would be to pay a poor compliment to your understanding or your heart.

Neither _your_ religion nor _your_ politics consist "in odd, perverse antipathies." You are not resolved to persevere in proscribing from the Const.i.tution so many millions of your countrymen, because, in contradiction to experience and to common sense, you think proper to imagine that their principles are subversive of common human society. To that I shall only say, that whoever has a temper which can be gratified by indulging himself in these good-natured fancies ought to do a great deal more. For an exclusion from the privileges of British subjects is not a cure for so terrible a distemper of the human mind as they are pleased to suppose in their countrymen. I rather conceive a partic.i.p.ation in those privileges to be itself a remedy for some mental disorders.

As little shall I detain you with matters that can as little obtain admission into a mind like yours: such as the fear, or pretence of fear, that, in spite of your own power and the trifling power of Great Britain, you may be conquered by the Pope; or that this commodious bugbear (who is of infinitely more use to those who pretend to fear than to those who love him) will absolve his Majesty's subjects from their allegiance, and send over the Cardinal of York to rule you as his viceroy; or that, by the plenitude of his power, he will take that fierce tyrant, the king of the French, out of his jail, and arm that nation (which on all occasions treats his Holiness so very politely) with his bulls and pardons, to invade poor old Ireland, to reduce you to Popery and slavery, and to force the free-born, naked feet of your people into the wooden shoes of that arbitrary monarch. I do not believe that discourses of this kind are held, or that anything like them will be held, by any who walk about without a keeper. Yet I confess, that, on occasions of this nature, I am the most afraid of the weakest reasonings, because they discover the strongest pa.s.sions. These things will never be brought out in definite propositions. They would not prevent pity towards any persons; they would only cause it for those who were capable of talking in such a strain. But I know, and am sure, that such ideas as no man will distinctly produce to another, or hardly venture to bring in any plain shape to his own mind, he will utter in obscure, ill-explained doubts, jealousies, surmises, fears, and apprehensions, and that in such a fog they will appear to have a good deal of size, and will make an impression, when, if they were clearly brought forth and defined, they would meet with nothing but scorn and derision.

There is another way of taking an objection to this concession, which I admit to be something more plausible, and worthy of a more attentive examination. It is, that this numerous cla.s.s of people is mutinous, disorderly, p.r.o.ne to sedition, and easy to be wrought upon by the insidious arts of wicked and designing men; that, conscious of this, the sober, rational, and wealthy part of that body, who are totally of another character, do by no means desire any partic.i.p.ation for themselves, or for any one else of their description, in the franchises of the British Const.i.tution.

I have great doubt of the exactness of any part of this observation. But let us admit that the body of the Catholics are p.r.o.ne to sedition, (of which, as I have said, I entertain much doubt,) is it possible that any fair observer or fair reasoner can think of confining this description to them only? I believe it to be possible for men to be mutinous and seditious who feel no grievance, but I believe no man will a.s.sert seriously, that, when people are of a turbulent spirit, the best way to keep them in order is to furnish them with something substantial to complain of.

You separate, very properly, the sober, rational, and substantial part of their description from the rest. You give, as you ought to do, weight only to the former. What I have always thought of the matter is this,--that the most poor, illiterate, and uninformed creatures upon earth are judges of a _practical_ oppression. It is a matter of feeling; and as such persons generally have felt most of it, and are not of an over-lively sensibility, they are the best judges of it. But for _the real cause_, or _the appropriate remedy_, they ought never to be called into council about the one or the other. They ought to be totally shut out: because their reason is weak; because, when once roused, their pa.s.sions are ungoverned; because they want information; because the smallness of the property which individually they possess renders them less attentive to the consequence of the measures they adopt in affairs of moment. When I find a great cry amongst the people who speculate little, I think myself called seriously to examine into it, and to separate the real cause from the ill effects of the pa.s.sion it may excite, and the bad use which artful men may make of an irritation of the popular mind. Here we must be aided by persons of a contrary character; we must not listen to the desperate or the furious: but it is therefore necessary for us to distinguish who are the _really_ indigent and the _really_ intemperate. As to the persons who desire this part in the Const.i.tution, I have no reason to imagine that they are men who have nothing to lose and much to look for in public confusion. The popular meeting from which apprehensions have been entertained has a.s.sembled. I have accidentally had conversation with two friends of mine who know something of the gentleman who was put into the chair upon that occasion: one of them has had money transactions with him; the other, from curiosity, has been to see his concerns: they both tell me he is a man of some property: but you must be the best judge of this, who by your office are likely to know his transactions. Many of the others are certainly persons of fortune; and all, or most, fathers of families, men in respectable ways of life, and some of them far from contemptible, either for their information, or for the abilities which they have shown in the discussion of their interests. What such men think it for their advantage to acquire ought not, _prima facie_, to be considered as rash or heady or incompatible with the public safety or welfare.

I admit, that men of the best fortunes and reputations, and of the best talents and education too, may by accident show themselves furious and intemperate in their desires. This is a great misfortune, when it happens; for the first presumptions are undoubtedly in their favor. We have two standards of judging, in this case, of the sanity and sobriety of any proceedings,--of unequal certainty, indeed, but neither of them to be neglected: the first is by the value of the object sought; the next is by the means through which it is pursued.

The object pursued by the Catholics is, I understand, and have all along reasoned as if it were so, in some degree or measure to be again admitted to the franchises of the Const.i.tution. Men are considered as under some derangement of their intellects, when they see good and evil in a different light from other men,--when they choose nauseous and unwholesome food, and reject such as to the rest of the world seems pleasant and is known to be nutritive. I have always considered the British Const.i.tution not to be a thing in itself so vicious as that none but men of deranged understanding and turbulent tempers could desire a share in it: on the contrary, I should think very indifferently of the understanding and temper of any body of men who did not wish to partake of this great and acknowledged benefit. I cannot think quite so favorably either of the sense or temper of those, if any such there are, who would voluntarily persuade their brethren that the object is not fit for them, or they for the object. Whatever may be my thoughts concerning them, I am quite sure that they who hold such language must forfeit all credit with the rest. This is infallible,--if they conceive any opinion of their judgment, they cannot possibly think them their friends. There is, indeed, one supposition which would reconcile the conduct of such gentlemen to sound reason, and to the purest affection towards their fellow-sufferers: it is, that they act under the impression of a well-grounded fear for the general interest. If they should be told, and should believe the story, that, if they dare attempt to make their condition better, they will infallibly make it worse,--that, if they aim at obtaining liberty, they will have their slavery doubled,--that their endeavor to put themselves upon anything which approaches towards an equitable footing with their fellow-subjects will be considered as an indication of a seditious and rebellious disposition,--such a view of things ought perfectly to restore the gentlemen, who so anxiously dissuade their countrymen from wishing a partic.i.p.ation with the privileged part of the people, to the good opinion of their fellows. But what is to _them_ a very full justification is not quite so honorable to that power from whose maxims and temper so good a ground of rational terror is furnished. I think arguments of this kind will never be used by the friends of a government which I greatly respect, or by any of the leaders of an opposition whom I have the honor to know and the sense to admire. I remember Polybius tells us, that, during his captivity in Italy as a Peloponnesian hostage, he solicited old Cato to intercede with the Senate for his release, and that of his countrymen: this old politician told him that he had better continue in his present condition, however irksome, than apply again to that formidable authority for their relief; that he ought to imitate the wisdom of his countryman Ulysses, who, when he was once out of the den of the Cyclops, had too much sense to venture again into the same cavern. But I conceive too high an opinion of the Irish legislature to think that they are to their fellow-citizens what the grand oppressors of mankind were to a people whom the fortune of war had subjected to their power. For though Cato could use such a parallel with regard to his Senate, I should really think it nothing short of impious to compare an Irish Parliament to a den of Cyclops. I hope the people, both here and with you, will always apply to the House of Commons with becoming modesty, but at the same time with minds unembarra.s.sed with any sort of terror.

As to the means which the Catholics employ to obtain this object, so worthy of sober and rational minds, I do admit that such means may be used in the pursuit of it as may make it proper for the legislature, in this case, to defer their compliance until the demandants are brought to a proper sense of their duty. A concession in which the governing power of our country loses its dignity is dearly bought even by him who obtains his object. All the people have a deep interest in the dignity of Parliament. But as the refusal of franchises which are drawn out of the first vital stamina of the British Const.i.tution is a very serious thing, we ought to be very sure that the manner and spirit of the application is offensive and dangerous indeed, before we ultimately reject all applications of this nature. The mode of application, I hear, is by pet.i.tion. It is the manner in which all the sovereign powers of the world are approached; and I never heard (except in the case of James the Second) that any prince considered this manner of supplication to be contrary to the humility of a subject or to the respect due to the person or authority of the sovereign. This rule, and a correspondent practice, are observed from the Grand Seignior down to the most petty prince or republic in Europe.

You have sent me several papers, some in print, some in ma.n.u.script. I think I had seen all of them, except the formula of a.s.sociation. I confess they appear to me to contain matter mischievous, and capable of giving alarm, if the spirit in which they are written should be found to make any considerable progress. But I am at a loss to know how to apply them as objections to the case now before us. When I find that _the General Committee_ which acts for the Roman Catholics in Dublin prefers the a.s.sociation proposed in the written draught you have sent me to a respectful application in Parliament, I shall think the persons who sign such a paper to be unworthy of any privilege which may be thought fit to be granted, and that such men ought, _by name_, to be excepted from any benefit under the Const.i.tution to which they offer this violence. But I do not find that this form of a seditious league has been signed by any person whatsoever, either on the part of the supposed projectors, or on the part of those whom it is calculated to seduce. I do not find, on inquiry, that such a thing was mentioned, or even remotely alluded to, in the general meeting of the Catholics from which so much violence was apprehended. I have considered the other publications, signed by individuals on the part of certain societies,--I may mistake, for I have not the honor of knowing them personally, but I take Mr. Butler and Mr.

Tandy not to be Catholics, but members of the Established Church. Not _one_ that I recollect of these publications, which you and I equally dislike, appears to be written by persons of that persuasion. Now, if, whilst a man is dutifully soliciting a favor from Parliament, any person should choose in an improper manner to show his inclination towards the cause depending, and if that _must_ destroy the cause of the pet.i.tioner, then, not only the pet.i.tioner, but the legislature itself, is in the power of any weak friend or artful enemy that the supplicant or that the Parliament may have. A man must be judged by his own actions only.

Certain Protestant Dissenters make seditious propositions to the Catholics, which it does not appear that they have yet accepted. It would be strange that the tempter should escape all punishment, and that he who, under circ.u.mstances full of seduction and full of provocation, has resisted the temptation should incur the penalty. You know, that, with regard to the Dissenters, who are _stated_ to be the chief movers in this vile scheme of altering the principles of election to a right of voting by the head, you are not able (if you ought even to wish such a thing) to deprive them of any part of the franchises and privileges which they hold on a footing of perfect equality with yourselves. _They_ may do what they please with const.i.tutional impunity; but the others cannot even listen with civility to an invitation from them to an ill-judged scheme of liberty, without forfeiting forever all hopes of any of those liberties which we admit to be sober and rational.

It is known, I believe, that the greater as well as the sounder part of our excluded countrymen have not adopted the wild ideas and wilder engagements which have been held out to them, but have rather chosen to hope small and safe concessions from the legal power than boundless objects from trouble and confusion. This mode of action seems to me to mark men of sobriety, and to distinguish them from those who are intemperate, from circ.u.mstance or from nature. But why do they not instantly disclaim and disavow those who make such advances to them? In this, too, in my opinion, they show themselves no less sober and circ.u.mspect. In the present moment nothing short of insanity could induce them to take such a step. Pray consider the circ.u.mstances.

Disclaim, says somebody, all union with the Dissenters;--right.--But when this your injunction is obeyed, shall I obtain the object which I solicit from _you_?--Oh, no, nothing at all like it!--But, in punishing us, by an exclusion from the Const.i.tution through the great gate, for having been invited to enter into it by a postern, will you punish by deprivation of their privileges, or mulet in any other way, those who have tempted us?--Far from it;--we mean to preserve all _their_ liberties and immunities, as _our_ life-blood. We mean to cultivate _them_, as brethren whom we love and respect;--with _you_ we have no fellowship. We can bear with patience their enmity to ourselves; but their friendship with you we will not endure. But mark it well! All our quarrels with _them_ are always to be revenged upon _you_. Formerly, it is notorious that we should have resented with the highest indignation your presuming to show any ill-will to them. You must not suffer them, now, to show any good-will to you. Know--and take it once for all--that it is, and ever has been, and ever will be, a fundamental maxim in our politics, that you are not to have any part or shadow or name of interest whatever in our state; that we look upon you as under an irreversible outlawry from our Const.i.tution,--as perpetual and unalliable aliens.

Such, my dear Sir, is the plain nature of the argument drawn from the Revolution maxims, enforced by a supposed disposition in the Catholics to unite with the Dissenters. Such it is, though it were clothed in never such bland and civil forms, and wrapped up, as a poet says, in a thousand "artful folds of sacred lawn." For my own part, I do not know in what manner to shape such arguments, so as to obtain admission for them into a rational understanding. Everything of this kind is to be reduced at last to threats of power. I cannot say, _Vae victis_! and then throw the sword into the scale. I have no sword; and if I had, in this case, most certainly, I would not use it as a makeweight in political reasoning.

Observe, on these principles, the difference between the procedure of the Parliament and the Dissenters towards the people in question. One employs courtship, the other force. The Dissenters offer bribes, the Parliament nothing but the _front negatif_ of a stern and forbidding authority. A man may be very wrong in his ideas of what is good for him. But no man affronts me, nor can therefore justify my affronting him, by offering to make me as happy as himself, according to his own ideas of happiness. This the Dissenters do to the Catholics. You are on the different extremes. The Dissenters offer, with regard to const.i.tutional rights and civil advantages of all sorts, _everything_; you refuse _everything_. With them, there is boundless, though not very a.s.sured hope; with you, a very sure and very unqualified despair. The terms of alliance from the Dissenters offer a representation of the commons, chosen out of the people by the head. This is absurdly and dangerously large, in my opinion; and that scheme of election is known to have been at all times perfectly odious to me. But I cannot think it right of course to punish the Irish Roman Catholics by an universal exclusion, because others, whom you would not punish at all, propose an universal admission. I cannot dissemble to myself, that, in this very kingdom, many persons who are not in the situation of the Irish Catholics, but who, on the contrary, enjoy the full benefit of the Const.i.tution as it stands, and some of whom, from the effect of their fortunes, enjoy it in a large measure, had some years ago a.s.sociated to procure great and undefined changes (they considered them as reforms) in the popular part of the Const.i.tution. Our friend, the late Mr. Flood, (no slight man,) proposed in his place, and in my hearing, a representation not much less extensive than this, for England,--in which every house was to be inhabited by a voter, _in addition_ to all the actual votes by other t.i.tles (some of the corporate) which we know do not require a house or a shed. Can I forget that a person of the very highest rank, of very large fortune, and of the first cla.s.s of ability, brought a bill into the House of Lords, in the head-quarters of aristocracy, containing identically the same project for the supposed adoption of which by a club or two it is thought right to extinguish all hopes in the Roman Catholics of Ireland? I cannot say it was very eagerly embraced or very warmly pursued. But the Lords neither did disavow the bill, nor treat it with any disregard, nor express any sort of disapprobation of its n.o.ble author, who has never lost, with king or people, the least degree of the respect and consideration which so justly belongs to him.

I am not at all enamored, as I have told you, with this plan of representation; as little do I relish any bandings or a.s.sociations for procuring it. But if the question was to be put to you and me,--_Universal_ popular representation, or _none at all for us and ours_,--we should find ourselves in a very awkward position. I do not like this kind of dilemmas, especially when they are practical.

Then, since our oldest fundamental laws follow, or rather couple, freehold with franchise,--since no principle of the Revolution shakes these liberties,--since the oldest and one of the best monuments of the Const.i.tution demands for the Irish the privilege which they supplicate,--since the principles of the Revolution coincide with the declarations of the Great Charter,--since the practice of the Revolution, in this point, did not contradict its principles,--since, from that event, twenty-five years had elapsed, before a domineering party, on a party principle, had ventured to disfranchise, without any proof whatsoever of abuse, the greater part of the community,--since the king's coronation oath does not stand in his way to the performance of his duty to all his subjects,--since you have given to all other Dissenters these privileges without limit which are hitherto withheld without any limitation whatsoever from the Catholics,--since no nation in the world has ever been known to exclude so great a body of men (not born slaves) from the civil state, and all the benefits of its Const.i.tution,--the whole question comes before Parliament as a matter for its prudence. I do not put the thing on a question of right. That discretion, which in judicature is well said by Lord c.o.ke to be a crooked cord, in legislature is a golden rule. Supplicants ought not to appear too much in the character of litigants. If the subject thinks so highly and reverently of the sovereign authority as not to claim anything of right, so that it may seem to be independent of the power and free choice of its government,--and if the sovereign, on his part, considers the advantages of the subjects as their right, and all their reasonable wishes as so many claims,--in the fortunate conjunction of these mutual dispositions are laid the foundations of a happy and prosperous commonwealth. For my own part, desiring of all things that the authority of the legislature under which I was born, and which I cherish, not only with a dutiful awe, but with a partial and cordial affection, to be maintained in the utmost possible respect, I never will suffer myself to suppose that at bottom their discretion will be found to be at variance with their justice.

The whole being at discretion, I beg leave just to suggest some matters for your consideration:--Whether the government in Church or State is likely to be more secure by continuing causes of grounded discontent to a very great number (say two millions) of the subjects? or whether the Const.i.tution, combined and balanced as it is, will be rendered more solid by depriving so large a part of the people of all concern or interest or share in its representation, actual or _virtual_? I here mean to lay an emphasis on the word _virtual_. Virtual representation is that in which there is a communion of interests and a sympathy in feelings and desires between those who act in the name of any description of people and the people in whose name they act, though the trustees are not actually chosen by them. This is virtual representation. Such a representation I think to be in many cases even better than the actual. It possesses most of its advantages, and is free from many of its inconveniences; it corrects the irregularities in the literal representation, when the shifting current of human affairs or the acting of public interests in different ways carry it obliquely from its first line of direction. The people may err in their choice; but common interest and common sentiment are rarely mistaken. But this sort of virtual representation cannot have a long or sure existence, if it has not a substratum in the actual. The member must have some relation to the const.i.tuent. As things stand, the Catholic, as a Catholic, and belonging to a description, has no _virtual_ relation to the representative,--but the _contrary_. There is a relation in mutual obligation. Grat.i.tude may not always have a very lasting power; but the frequent recurrence of an application for favors will revive and refresh it, and will necessarily produce some degree of mutual attention. It will produce, at least, acquaintance. The several descriptions of people will not be kept so much apart as they now are, as if they were not only separate nations, but separate species. The stigma and reproach, the hideous mask will be taken off, and men will see each other as they are. Sure I am that there have been thousands in Ireland who have never conversed with a Roman Catholic in their whole lives, unless they happened to talk to their gardener's workmen, or to ask their way, when they had lost it in their sports,--or, at best, who had known them only as footmen, or other domestics, of the second and third order: and so averse were they, some time ago, to have them near their persons, that they would not employ even those who could never find their way beyond the stable. I well remember a great, and in many respects a good man, who advertised for a blacksmith, but at the same time added, he must be a Protestant. It is impossible that such a state of things, though natural goodness in many persons will undoubtedly make exceptions, must not produce alienation on the one side and pride and insolence on the other.

Reduced to a question of discretion, and that discretion exercised solely upon what will appear best for the conservation of the state on its present basis, I should recommend it to your serious thoughts, whether the narrowing of the foundation is always the best way to secure the building? The body of disfranchised men will not be perfectly satisfied to remain always in that state. If they are not satisfied, you have two millions of subjects in your bosom full of uneasiness: not that they cannot overturn the Act of Settlement, and put themselves and you under an arbitrary master; or that they are not permitted to sp.a.w.n a hydra of wild republics, on principles of a pretended natural equality in man; but because you will not suffer them to enjoy the ancient, fundamental, tried advantages of a British Const.i.tution,--that you will not permit them to profit of the protection of a common father or the freedom of common citizens, and that the only reason which can be a.s.signed for this disfranchis.e.m.e.nt has a tendency more deeply to ulcerate their minds than the act of exclusion itself. What the consequence of such feelings must be it is for you to look to. To warn is not to menace.

I am far from a.s.serting that men will not excite disturbances without just cause. I know that such an a.s.sertion is not true. But neither is it true that disturbances have never just complaints for their origin. I am sure that it is hardly prudent to furnish them with such causes of complaint as every man who thinks the British Const.i.tution a benefit may think at least colorable and plausible.

Several are in dread of the manuvres of certain persons among the Dissenters, who turn this ill humor to their own ill purposes. You know, better than I can, how much these proceedings of certain among the Dissenters are to be feared. You are to weigh, with the temper which is natural to you, whether it may be for the safety of our establishment that the Catholics should be ultimately persuaded that they have no hope to enter into the Const.i.tution but through the Dissenters.

Think whether this be the way to prevent or dissolve factious combinations against the Church or the State. Reflect seriously on the possible consequences of keeping in the heart of your country a bank of discontent, every hour acc.u.mulating, upon which every description of seditious men may draw at pleasure. They whose principles of faction will dispose them to the establishment of an arbitrary monarchy will find a nation of men who have no sort of interest in freedom, but who will have an interest in that equality of justice or favor with which a wise despot must view all his subjects who do not attack the foundations of his power. Love of liberty itself may, in such men, become the means of establishing an arbitrary domination. On the other hand, they who wish for a democratic republic will find a set of men who have no choice between civil servitude and the entire ruin of a mixed Const.i.tution.

Suppose the people of Ireland divided into three parts. Of these, (I speak within compa.s.s,) two are Catholic; of the remaining third, one half is composed of Dissenters. There is no natural union between those descriptions. It may be produced. If the two parts Catholic be driven into a close confederacy with half the third part of Protestants, with a view to a change in the Const.i.tution in Church or State or both, and you rest the whole of their security on a handful of gentlemen, clergy, and their dependents,--compute the strength _you have in Ireland_, to oppose to grounded discontent, to capricious innovation, to blind popular fury, and to ambitious, turbulent intrigue.

You mention that the minds of some gentlemen are a good deal heated, and that it is often said, that, rather than submit to such persons, having a share in their franchises, they would throw up their independence, and precipitate an union with Great Britain. I have heard a discussion concerning such an union amongst all sorts of men ever since I remember anything. For my own part, I have never been able to bring my mind to anything clear and decisive upon the subject. There cannot be a more arduous question. As far as I can form an opinion, it would not be for the mutual advantage of the two kingdoms. Persons, however, more able than I am think otherwise. But whatever the merits of this union may be, to make it a _menace_, it must be shown to be an _evil_, and an evil more particularly to those who are threatened with it than to those who hold it out as a terror. I really do not see how this threat of an union can operate, or that the Catholics are more likely to be losers by that measure than the churchmen.

The humors of the people, and of politicians too, are so variable in themselves, and are so much under the occasional influence of some leading men, that it is impossible to know what turn the public mind here would take on such an event. There is but one thing certain concerning it. Great divisions and vehement pa.s.sions would precede this union, both on the measure itself and on its terms; and particularly, this very question of a share in the representation for the Catholics, from whence the project of an union originated, would form a princ.i.p.al part in the discussion; and in the temper in which some gentlemen seem inclined to throw themselves, by a sort of high, indignant pa.s.sion, into the scheme, those points would not be deliberated with all possible calmness.

From my best observation, I should greatly doubt, whether, in the end, these gentlemen would obtain their object, so as to make the exclusion of two millions of their countrymen a fundamental article in the union.

The demand would be of a nature quite unprecedented. You might obtain the union; and yet a gentleman, who, under the new union establishment, would aspire to the honor of representing his county, might possibly be as much obliged, as he may fear to be under the old separate establishment, to the unsupportable mortification of asking his neighbors, who have a different opinion concerning the elements in the sacrament, for their votes.

I believe, nay, I am sure, that the people of Great Britain, with or without an union, might be depended upon, in oases of any real danger, to aid the government of Ireland, with the same cordiality as they would support their own, against any wicked attempts to shake the security of the happy Const.i.tution in Church and State. But before Great Britain engages in any quarrel, the _cause of the dispute_ would certainly be a part of her consideration. If confusions should arise in that kingdom from too steady an attachment to a proscriptive, monopolizing system, and from the resolution of regarding the franchise, and in it the security of the subject, as belonging rather to religious opinions than to civil qualification and civil conduct, I doubt whether you might quite certainly reckon on obtaining an aid of force from hence for the support of that system. We might extend your distractions to this country by taking part in them. England will be indisposed, I suspect, to send an army for the conquest of Ireland. What was done in 1782 is a decisive proof of her sentiments of justice and moderation. She will not be fond of making another American war in Ireland. The principles of such a war would but too much resemble the former one. The well-disposed and the ill-disposed in England would (for different reasons perhaps) be equally averse to such an enterprise. The confiscations, the public auctions, the private grants, the plantations, the transplantations, which formerly animated so many adventurers, even among sober citizens, to such Irish expeditions, and which possibly might have animated some of them to the American, can have no existence in the case that we suppose.

Let us form a supposition, (no foolish or ungrounded supposition,) that, in an age when men are infinitely more disposed to heat themselves with political than religious controversies, the former should entirely prevail, as we see that in some places they have prevailed, over the latter,--and that the Catholics of Ireland, from the courtship paid them on the one hand, and the high tone of refusal on the other, should, in order to enter into all the rights of subjects, all become Protestant Dissenters, and, as the others do, take all your oaths. They would all obtain their civil objects; and the change, for anything I know to the contrary, (in the dark as I am about the Protestant Dissenting tenets,) might be of use to the health of their souls. But what security our Const.i.tution, in Church or State, could derive from that event, I cannot possibly discern. Depend upon it, it is as true as Nature is true, that, if you force them out of the religion of habit, education, or opinion, it is not to yours they will ever go. Shaken in their minds, they will go to that where the dogmas are fewest,--where they are the most uncertain,--where they lead them the least to a consideration of what they have abandoned. They will go to that uniformly democratic system to whose first movements they owed their emanc.i.p.ation. I recommend you seriously to turn this in your mind. Believe that it requires your best and maturest thoughts. Take what course you please,--union or no union; whether the people remain Catholics or become Protestant Dissenters, sure it is that the present state of monopoly _cannot_ continue.

If England were animated, as I think she is not, with her former spirit of domination, and with the strong theological hatred which she once cherished for that description of her fellow-Christians and fellow-subjects, I am yet convinced, that, after the fullest success in a ruinous struggle, you would be obliged to abandon that monopoly. We were obliged to do this, even when everything promised success, in the American business. If you should make this experiment at last, under the pressure of any necessity, you never can do it well. But if, instead of falling into a pa.s.sion, 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 you 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 unembarra.s.sed 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 Const.i.tution 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. Everything 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 Const.i.tution, 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 rise a step or two the qualification of the Catholic voters. But if you were to-morrow to put the Catholic freeholder on the footing of the most favored 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 favor, 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.

My dear Sir, I have nearly done. I meant to write you a long letter: I have written a long dissertation. 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 favor 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 circ.u.mstances 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 Catholic, 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 Catholics 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. .h.i.ther; 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 colonies 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 prognostics taken from ideas and pa.s.sions, 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 landholders, and an aristocratic representation at the choice of the crown, neither was the choice of the crown nor the election of the landholders limited by a consideration of religion. We had no dread for the Protestant Church which we settled there, because we permitted the French Catholics, in the utmost lat.i.tude of the description, to be free subjects. They are good subjects, I have no doubt; but I will not allow that any French Canadian Catholics are better men or better citizens than the Irish of the same communion.

Pa.s.sing from the extremity of the West to the extremity almost of the East, I have been many years (now entering into the twelfth) employed in supporting the rights, privileges, laws, and immunities of a very remote people. I have not as yet been able to finish my task. I have struggled through much discouragement and much opposition, much obloquy, much calumny, for a people with whom I have no tie but the common bond of mankind. In this I have not been left alone. We did not fly from our undertaking because the people are Mahometans or Pagans, and that a great majority of the Christians amongst them are Papists. Some gentlemen in Ireland, I dare say, have good reasons for what they may do, which do not occur to me. I do not presume to condemn them; but, thinking and acting as I have done towards those remote nations, I should not know how to show my face, here or in Ireland, if I should say that all the Pagans, all the Mussulmen, and even all the Papists, (since they must form the highest stage in the climax of evil,) are worthy of a liberal and honorable condition, except those of one of the descriptions, which forms the majority of the inhabitants of the country in which you and I were born. If such are the Catholics of Ireland, ill-natured and unjust people, from our own data, may be inclined not to think better of the Protestants of a soil which is supposed to infuse into its sects a kind of venom unknown in other places.

You hated the old system as early as I did. Your first juvenile lance was broken against that giant. I think you were even the first who attacked the grim phantom. You have an exceedingly good understanding, very good humor, and the best heart in the world. The dictates of that temper and that heart, as well as the policy pointed out by that understanding, led you to abhor the old code. You abhorred it, as I did, for its vicious perfection. For I must do it justice: it was a complete system, full of coherence and consistency, well digested and well composed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debas.e.m.e.nt, in them, of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man. It is a thing humiliating enough, that we are doubtful of the effect of the medicines we compound,--we are sure of our poisons. My opinion ever was, (in which I heartily agree with those that admired the old code,) that it was so constructed, that, if there was once a breach in any essential part of it, the ruin of the whole, or nearly of the whole, was, at some time or other, a certainty. For that reason I honor and shall forever honor and love you, and those who first caused it to stagger, crack, and gape. Others may finish; the beginners have the glory; and, take what part you please at this hour, (I think you will take the best,) your first services will never be forgotten by a grateful country. Adieu!

Present my best regards to those I know,--and as many as I know in our country I honor. 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] The letter is written on folio sheets.

[29] A small error of fact as to the abjuration oath, but of no importance in the argument.

HINTS FOR A MEMORIAL