It was necessary, on our part, that the natural government should show itself worthy of that name.  It was necessary, at the crisis I speak of, that the supreme power of the state should meet the conciliatory dispositions of the subject.  To delay protection would be to reject allegiance.  And why should it be rejected, or even coldly and suspiciously received?  If any independent Catholic state should choose to take part with this kingdom in a war with France and Spain, that bigot (if such a bigot could be found) would be heard with little respect, who could dream of objecting his religion to an ally whom the nation would not only receive with its freest thanks, but purchase with the last remains of its exhausted treasure.  To such an ally we should not dare to whisper a single syllable of those base and invidious topics upon which some unhappy men would persuade the state to reject the duty and allegiance of its own members.  Is it, then, because foreigners are in a condition to set our malice at defiance, that with them we are willing to contract engagements of friendship, and to keep them with fidelity and honor, but that, because we conceive some descriptions of our countrymen are not powerful enough to punish our malignity, we will not permit them to support our common interest?  Is it on that ground that our anger is to be kindled by their offered kindness?  Is it on that ground that they are to be subjected to penalties, because they are willing by actual merit to purge themselves from imputed crimes?  Lest by an adherence to the cause of their country they should acquire a title to fair and equitable treatment, are we resolved to furnish them with causes of eternal enmity, and rather supply them with just and founded motives to disaffection than not to have that disaffection in existence to justify an oppression which, not from policy, but disposition, we have predetermined to exercise?

What shadow of reason could be assigned, why, at a time when the most Protestant part of this Protestant empire found it for its advantage to unite with the two principal Popish states, to unite itself in the closest bonds with France and Spain, for our destruction, that we should refuse to unite with our own Catholic countrymen for our own preservation?  Ought we, like madmen, to tear off the plasters that the lenient hand of prudence had spread over the wounds and gashes which in our delirium of ambition we had given to our own body?  No person ever reprobated the American war more than I did, and do, and ever shall.  But I never will consent that we should lay additional, voluntary penalties on ourselves, for a fault which carries but too much of its own punishment in its own nature.  For one, I was delighted with the proposal of internal peace.  I accepted the blessing with thankfulness and transport.  I was truly happy to find one good effect of our civil distractions:  that they had put an end to all religious strife and heart-burning in our own bowels.  What must be the sentiments of a man who would wish to perpetuate domestic hostility when the causes of dispute are at an end, and who, crying out for peace with one part of the nation on the most humiliating terms, should deny it to those who offer friendship without any terms at all?