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 hitherto 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 Constitution?

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 Constitution 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 participation in those privileges to be itself a remedy for some mental disorders.