every state is to render its subjects justly discontented; nor is there in politics or science any more effectual secret for their security, ihan to establish in their people a firm opinion that no change can be for their advantage. It is true that bigotry and fanaticism may for a time draw great multitudes of people from a knowledge of their true and substantial interest. But upon this I have to remark three things; first, that such a temper can never become universal, or last for a long time. The principle of religion is seldom lasting; the majority of men are in no persuasion bigots; they are not willing to sacrifice, on every vain imagination that superstition or enthusiasm holds forth, or that even zeal and piety recommend, the certain possession of their temporal happiness. And if such a spirit has been at any time roused in a society, after it has had its paroxysm, it commonly subsides and is quiet, and is even the weaker for the violence of its first exertion; security and ease are its mortal enemies. But, secondly, if any thing can tend to revive and keep it up, it is to keep alive the passions of men by ill usage. This is enough to irritate even those who have not a spark of bigotry in their constitution to the most desperate enterprises; it certainly will inflame, darken, and render more dangerous the spirit of bigotry in those who are possessed by it. Lastly, By rooting out any sect, you are never secure against the effects of fanaticism; it may arise on the side of the most favoured opinions; and many are the instances wherein the established religion of a state has grown ferocious, and turned upon its keeper, and has often torn to pieces the civil establishment that had cherished it, and which it was designed to support, France-England-Holland. But there may be danger of wishing a change, even where no religious motive can, operate; and every enemy to such a state comes as a friend to the subject, and where other countries are under terrour, they begin to hope. This argument ad verecundiam has as much force as any such have. But I think it fares but very indifferently with those who make use of it, for they would get but little to be proved abettors of tyranny, at the expence of putting me to an inconvenient acknowledgement. For if I were to confess that there are any circumstances in which it would be better to establish such a religion With regard to the pope's interest. This foreign chief of their religion cannot be more In the second year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, were enacted also 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 master-pieces 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. Being 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 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 governours 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 fellow citizens; 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. A length, however, the policy of this expedient is worn out; the passions of men are cooled; those laws begin to disclose themselves, and to produce 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. MY DEAR SIR, A LETTER TO WILLIAM SMITH, ESQ.* YOUR letter is, to myself, infinitely obliging; with regard to you, I can find no fault with it, except that of a tone of humility and disqualification, which neither your rank, nor the place you are in, nor the profession you belong to, nor your very extraordinary learning and talents will, in propriety, demand, or perhaps admit. These dispositions will be still less proper, if you should feel them in the extent your modesty leads you to express them. You have certainly given by far too strong a proof of self-diffidence, by asking the opinion of a man circumstanced as I am, on the important subject of your letter. You are far more capable of forming just conceptions upon it than I can be. However, since you are pleased to command me to lay before you my thoughts, as materials upon which your better judgment may operate, I shall obey you: and submit them, with great deference, to your melioration or rejection. But first permit me to put myself in the right. I owe you an answer to your former letter. It did not desire one; but it deserved it. If not for an answer, it called for an acknowledgment. It was a new favour; and indeed I should be worse than insensible, if I did not consider the honours you have heaped upon me, with no sparing hand, with becom Then a member of the Irish parliament; now one of the barons of the court of exchequer n Ireland. ing gratitude. But your letter arrived to me at a time, when the closing of my long and last business in life, a business extremely complex, and full of difficulties and vexations of all sorts, occupied me in a manner which those who have not seen the interiour as well as exteriour of it, cannot easily imagine. 1 confess that in the crisis of that rude conflict I neglected many things that well deserved my best attention: none that deserved it better, or have caused me more regret in the neglect, than your letter. The instant that business was over, and the house had passed its judgment on the conduct of the managers, I lost no time to execute what for years I had resolved on: it was to quit my public station, and to seek that tranquillity in my very advanced age, to which, after a very tempestuous life, I thought myself entitled. But God has thought fit (and I unfeigned'y acknowledge his justice) to dispose of things otherwise. So heavy calamity has fallen upon me, as to disable me for busine. 7, and to disqualify me for repose. The ex stence I have, I do not know that I can call life. Accordingly I do not meddle with any one measure of government, though, for what reasons I know not, you seem to suppose me deeply in the secret of affairs. I only know, so far as your side of the water is concerned, that your present excellent lord lieutenant (the best man in every relation, that I have ever been acquainted with) has perfectly pure intentions with regard to Ireland; and of course, that he wishes cordially well to those, who form the great mass of its inhabitants; and who, as they are well or ill managed, must form an important part of its strength or weakness. If, with regard to that great object, he has carried over any ready-made system, I assure you it is perfectly unknown to me: I am very much retired from the world, and live in much ignorance. This, I hope, will form my humble apology, if I should err in the notions I entertain of the question which is soon to become the subject of your deliberations. At the same time accept it as an apology for my neglects. You need nake no apology for your attachmen' the religious description you belong to. : proves (as in you it is sincere) your attachment to the great points in which the leading divisions are agreed, when the lesser, in which they differ, are so dear to you. I shall never call any religious opinions, which appear important to serious and pious minds, things of no consideration. Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference, which is, at least, half infidelity. As long as men hold charity and justice to be essential integral parts of religion, there can be little danger from a strong attachment to particular tenets in faith. This I am perfectly sure is your case; but I am not equally sure, that either teal for the tenets of faith, or the smallest degree of charity or justice, have much influenced the gentlemen who, under pretexts of zeal, have resisted the enfranchisement of their country. My dear son, who was a person of discernment, as well as clear and acute in his expressions, said in a letter of his, which I have seen, "that in order to grace their cause and to draw some respect to their persons, they pretend to be bigots." But here I take it we have not much to do with the theological tenets, on the one side of the question or the other. The point itself is practically decided, That religion is owned by the state. Except in a settled maintenance, it is protected. A great deal of the rubbish, which as a nuisance long obstructed the way, is removed. One impediment remained longer, as a matter to justify the procription of the body of our country, after the rest had been abandoned as untenable ground. But the business of the pope (that mixed person of politics and religion) has long ceased to be a bugbear: for some time past he has ceased to be even a colourable pretext. This was well known, when the catholics of these kingdoms, fur amusement, were obliged on oath to d him in his political capacity; which implied an allowance for them to recognize him in some sort of ecclesiastical superiority. It was a compromise of the old dispute. For my part, I confess, I wish that we had been less eager in this point. I don't think indeed that much mischief will happen from it, if things are otherwise properly managed. Too nice an inquisition ought not to be made into opinions that are dying away of themselves. Had we lived an hundred and fifty years ago, I should have been as earnest and anxious as any body for this sort of abjuration: but living at the time in which I live, and obliged to speculate forward instead of backward, I must fairly say, I could well endure the existence of every sort of collateral aid, which opinion might, in the now state of things, afford to authority. I must see much more danger than in my life I have seen, or than others will venture seriously to affirm that they see, in the pope aforesaid, (though a foreign power, and with his long tail of etceteras,) before I should be active in weakening any hold, which government might think it prudent to resort to, in the management of that large part of the king's subjects. I do not choose to direct all my precautions to the part where the danger does not press; and to leave myself open and unguarded, where I am not only really, but visibly attacked. My whole politics, at present, centre in one point; and to this the merit or demerit of every measure (with me) is referable; that is, what will most promote or depress the cause of jacobinism. What is jacobinism? It is an attempt (hitherto but too successful) to eradicate prejudice out of the minds of men, for the purpose of putting all power and authority into the hands of the persons capable of occasionally enlightening the minds of the people. For this purpose the jacobins have resolved to destroy the whole frame and fabric of the old societies of the world, and to regenerate them after their fhion. To obtain an army for this purpose. they every where engage the poor, by hoking out to them as a bribe the spoils of the rich. This I take to be a fair description of the principles and leading maxims of the enlightend of our day, who are commonly called jacobins. As the grand prejudice, and that which holds all the other prejudices together, the first, last, and middle object of their hostility is religion. With that they are at inexpiable war. They make no distinction of sects. A Chris as such. Is to them an enemy. What then is left to a real Christian, (Christian as 4 a believer and as a statesman,) but to make a All the principal religions in Europe stand upheld in high respect and veneration; and You have made, as you naturally do, a very month, that after parliament had been led into a step, quite unparalleled in its records, after they had resisted all concession and even hearing, with an obstinacy equal to any thing that could have actuated a party domination in the second or eighth of Queen Anne,-after the strange adventure of the grand juries, and after parliament had listened to the sovereign pleading for the emancipation of his subjects;-it was after all this, that such a grudging and discontent was expressed, as must justly have alarmed, as it did extremely alarm, the whole of the catholic body: and I remember but one period in my whole life, (I mean the savage period between 1761 and 1767,) in which they have been more harshly or contumeliously treated, than since the last partial enlargement. And thus I am convinced it will be, by paroxysms, as long as any stigma remains on them, and whilst they are considered as no better than half citizens. If they are kept such for any length of time, they will be made whole jacobins. Against this grand and dreadful evil of our time (I do not love to cheat myself or others) I do not know any solid security whatsoever. But I am quite certain that what will come nearest to it, is to interest as many as you can in the present order of things; religiously, civilly, politically, by all the ties and principles by which mankind are held. This is like to be effectual policy: I am sure it is honourable policy: and it is better to fail, if fail we must, in the paths of direct and manly, than of low and crooked wisdom. As to the capacity of sitting in parliament, after all the capacities for voting, for the army, for the navy, for the professions, for civil offices, it is a dispute de land caprina, in my poor opinion; at least on the part of those who oppose it. In the first place, this admission to office, and this exclusion from parliament, on the principle of an exclusion from political power, is the very reverse of the principle of the English test act. If I were to form a judgment from experience rather than theory, I should doubt much whether the capacity for, or even the possession of a seat in parliament, did really convey much of power to be properly called political. I have sat there with some observation, for nine-and-twenty years, or thereabouts. The power of a member of parliament is uncertain and indirect: and if power rather than splendour and fame were the object, I should think that any of the principal clerks in office, to say nothing of their superiours, (several of whom are disqualified by law for seats in parliament,) possess far more power than nine-tenths of the members of the house of commons. I might say this of men who seemed from their fortunes, their weight in their country, and their talents, to be persons of figure there; and persons too not in opposition to the prevailing party in government. But be they what they will, on a fair canvass of the several prevalent parliamentary interests in Ireland, I cannot, out of the three hundred members, of whom the Irish parliament is composed, discover that above three, or at the utmost four catholics, would be returned to the house of commons. But suppose they should amount to thirty, that is to a tentk part, (a thing I hold impossible for a long series of years, and never very likely to hap pen,) what is this to those, who are to balance them in the one house, and the clear and settled majority in the other? For I think it absolutely impossible, that in the course of many years, above four or five peers should be created at that communion. In fact, the exclusion of them seems to me only to mark jealousy and suspicion, and not to provide security in any way. But I return to the old ground. The danger is not there :-these are things long since done away. The grand controversy is no longer between you and them. Forgive this length. My pen has insensibly run on. You are yourself to blame, if you are much fatigued. I congratulate you on the auspicious opening of your session. Surely Great Britain and Ireland ought to join in wreathing a never-fading garland, for the head of Grattan. Adieu! my dear Sir-good nights to you!-I never can have any. Yours always most sincerely, Jan. 29th, 1795, Twelve at night. |