This is not a mere theory; though, whilst men are men, it is a theory that cannot be false.  I do not desire to revive all the particulars in my memory; I wish them to sleep forever; but it is impossible I should wholly forget what happened in some parts of Ireland, with very few and short intermissions, from the year 1761 to the year 1766, both inclusive.  In a country of miserable police, passing from the extremes of laxity to the extremes of rigor, among a neglected and therefore disorderly populace, if any disturbance or sedition, from any grievance real or imaginary, happened to arise, it was presently perverted from its true nature, often criminal enough in itself to draw upon it a severe, appropriate punishment:  it was metamorphosed into a conspiracy against the state, and prosecuted as such.  Amongst the Catholics, as being by far the most numerous and the most wretched, all sorts of offenders against the laws must commonly be found.  The punishment of low people for the offences usual among low people would warrant no inference against any descriptions of religion or of politics.  Men of consideration from their age, their profession, or their character, men of proprietary landed estates, substantial renters, opulent merchants, physicians, and titular bishops, could not easily be suspected of riot in open day, or of nocturnal assemblies for the purpose of pulling down hedges, making breaches in park-walls, firing barns, maiming cattle, and outrages of a similar nature, which characterize the disorders of an oppressed or a licentious populace.  But when the evidence given on the trial for such misdemeanors qualified them as overt acts of high treason, and when witnesses were found (such witnesses as they were) to depose to the taking of oaths of allegiance by the rioters to the king of France, to their being paid by his money, and embodied and exercised under his officers, to overturn the state for the purposes of that potentate,—­in that case, the rioters might (if the witness was believed) be supposed only the troops, and persons more reputable the leaders and commanders, in such a rebellion.  All classes in the obnoxious description, who could not be suspected of the lower crime of riot, might be involved in the odium, in the suspicion, and sometimes in the punishment, of a higher and far more criminal species of offence.  These proceedings did not arise from any one of the Popery laws since repealed, but from this circumstance, that, when it answered the purposes of an election party or a malevolent person of influence to forge such plots, the people had no protection.  The people of that description have no hold on the gentlemen who aspire to be popular representatives.  The candidates neither love nor respect nor fear them, individually or collectively.  I do not think this evil (an evil amongst a thousand others) at this day entirely over; for I conceive I have lately seen some indication of a disposition perfectly similar to the old one,—­that is, a disposition to carry the imputation of crimes from persons to descriptions, and wholly to alter the character and quality of the offences themselves.