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ficiency of good defigns and private virtues. The truth is, that the perfonal qualities of individuals are loft in the irretrievable difficulty of political fituation. In the actual circumftances of our conftitution, Ireland cannot, without exertions more than human, be effectually ferved by her representatives. Our Parliament, like the late Court of France, is the center of a fyftem that goads and irritates the people, and which never can cease to draw down on Ireland a repetition of the disasters we have witneffed. That fyftem branches too widely to be counteracted by beneficent intentions, however prevalent, in any of its members. Partial agency, or temporary efforts are inadequate to correct the general mifchief. It was not the fault of Lewis XVI. that his fubjects were withdrawn from their allegiance. It was not the confequence of acts of harfhnefs, proceeding from the monarch, or from those who cooperated with him in the duties of legiflation, Although not fo actively benevolent, the intentions of Lewis XV. were not lefs upright than thofe of his fucceffor. The game laws, the collection of the revenue, the power of fubaltern men, the habitual contempt of the lower people, the defective constitution of a noble caft, widely diffufed through all the claffes of life, and interfering with the pride and ambition, and with every other pretenfion of men, whofe birth was not adorned by privileges, all thefe concurring circumstances of irritation had acted long and fenfibly upon the people, and when the fyren voice of reform founded in their ears, they liftened to its promifes and were feduced.

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Where they were not thwarted, the rule of the French gentry was affectionate and gentle, but it was capricious and did not brook oppofition.

I can account for the perverfion of the public mind. both in France and Ireland; but I do not regard with lefs horror the outrages, to which it led; nor would I recommend in either cafe lefs activity in repelling the licentiousness that arofe from it. If the King of France had, on the first appearance of infubordination, employed,, like the British Monarch, his hitherto untainted force, he had acted well and wifely for humanity. But indeed, he would have been unpardonable, if he had fat down after his victory, to that very constitution, to which the refractory temper was, with juftice, to be attributed. To the good fortune of fubduing his mifguided fubjects, our Sovereign adds the nobler enterprise of reclaiming them. The riot of Paris, and that of London in 1780, ought to have been fuppreffed by the fame measures; but the former fhould have given oc cafion to a serious train of reflections; which the latter, the most groundless perhaps and unpro voked of all popular rifings, did not in any ref fpect call for. The caufes. that tend to produce diforders and commotions in the ftate, are matters for the confideration of the ftatefman, not of the magiftrate. Let civil fociety at all hazards be preferved; but examine by what means civil fociety came to be thus imminently in peril. Neither the views of the leaders in this late confpiracy, nor the temper of those who took the field, could have anfwered the purpose of improvement to this country. Their fuccefs, dearly purchased by the miseries of war, waged at our own doors, and between the tendereft connexions, could have only added to our other calamities, the dominion of a people, who in many countries have tafted of

power,

This appears to be the object of Lord Cornwallis's miffion to Ireland, and the exact character of his government,

power, and in all abufed it; or, if fortune favored the infurgents against their ally and their enemy, their climax of victorious hope would be the anarchy of an armed multitude. With them no terms were to be made; from them only defolation was to be expected. What then?-Means inadmiffible were employed. Is the improvement to be rejected, which is fafe and practicable?

I must offer my protest against another mifconftruction. Let not my objections to our mode of limiting the monarchy, be deemed an impeachment of the principle. We are not fo fituated, that it fhould be neceffary to decide between a government of will and caprice, and the rule of law and course of fettled juftice.* Political, is the bulwark of civil liberty. I have learned as much as any other perfon to reverence that form of fociety, under which the fifter nation has rifen to unparalleled profperity. I admire the fyftem through all its branches and inftitutions; but if in the entire mechanifm I were to felect that article, which appears moft effential to the perfection of the whole, I fhould point without hesitation to Parliament, and applaud the utility of that inftitution, which, revifing the exercise

The gentleman, to whom this letter is addreffed, imputed to my former publication, the confufion of civil with political liberty. I apprehend that I am not guilty of that error; but I confider the ftate itfelf to exift merely for the good of the individuals who compofe it. Political liberty, or the privileges of he ftate, is confequently inferior to civil freedom, or the advanages of the individuals. The former is the means, the latter is the end. The one is merely fubfervient and auxiliary to the other. I adopt Mr. Hume's fentiments on this fubject, “ We are to look upon all the vaft apparatus of our Government, as having ultimately no other object or purpofe but the diftribution of juftice; or in other words, the fupport of the twelve Judges. Kings and parliaments, fleets and armies, Minifters, and Privy Counsellors, are all in their end fubfervient to the part of Adminiftration"-Effay on Government.

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exercife of authority, corrects its tendency to degenerate. My argument was directed against the fuperfluous extenfion of the principle of Parliamentary controul, and against an unprofitable and delufive imitation of British forms. When we pronounce this juft eulogium on the British government, that it is calculated to provide for liberty, and correfponds to its deftination, we draw the line with accuracy, that difcriminates it from our own. I am not indifferent to political freedom, nor inattentive to the means by which it is to be procured, or to the value of the enjoyment; but I must not therefore be expected to purfue my object through obftacles, to which a difference of circumstances has given rife, and which that dif ference renders infurmountable. Is he the enemy of liberty who fays of France, that it is not free, or of Athens that it was not happy? There are ew fhades of diffimilitude between the conftituions of America and France, but there is a difparity in the habits of life, and in the divifion of property; need I tell you how unlike is the agency of either government upon its fubjects? The very institutions, under which Rome flourished at one period, after a change of manners, proved her weakness, and the caufe of her deftruction. The civil privileges enjoyed under the British government are of univerfal application; but the British diftribution of powers is not adapted to

many

* A political writer of very and defervedly high repu tation, has made an eulogium on the English conftitution to which I fo fully accede, that I am willing to yield the argument, if the defeription can be made to apply to the govern. ment of Ireland. "The British Government is the only one in the annals of mankind, which has aimed at diffufing liberty through a multitude of people, fpread over a wide extent of territory."-Profeffor Millar's View of the English Government.

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many countries; and ftill contemplating the ab. fence of thofe leading interefts, which are deftined in that fyftem, to be the protection of the people, I muft clafs Ireland among the exceptions. Neither Wales nor Scotland appear to me to afford proper materials for a mixed monarchy, but both nations enjoy that advantage, engrafted on the capability of England. Ireland flands, at least as much as the latter, in need of this affiftance. You do not act in the fpirit of enlightened attachment, but in a ridiculous and pedantic bigotry, when you chain yourfelf down to the forms of British liberty. You ought to propofe for your object the focial happiness, that thefe forms confer; and you fhould purfue it by whatever means it is moft cafily attainable. The practice, as we have before obferved, is wofully at variance with the theory of our government. When it is attempted to reconcile them by merely internal regulations, difficulties occur, which are not to be approached without the imminent hazard of anarchy; whilft neither the ftate is endangered, nor are its material inftitutions, by incorporating the legislative councils of the empire; and by that measure the powers and influences would be cleared away, which affect the people unfavourably. Let me add, that this circumftance of diftinct and independent authorities in the fame ftate, is anomalous in hif tory. All other governments have tended to unity in legislation.

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But this inaptitude of British institutions to the Irish ftate, paffes generally unnoticed in our politi

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* I mean diftin&tly to affert this propofition, that an Union with Great Britain is calculated to produce the beneficial confequences of a reform in Parliament, without throwing into the democracy of the country a weight or power, which the experience of the age convinces us, is not to be exercised without abufe, or conferred without indifcretion.

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