Think whether this be the way to prevent or dissolve factious combinations against the Church or the State.  Reflect seriously on the possible consequences of keeping in the heart of your country a bank of discontent, every hour accumulating, upon which every description of seditious men may draw at pleasure.  They whose principles of faction will dispose them to the establishment of an arbitrary monarchy will find a nation of men who have no sort of interest in freedom, but who will have an interest in that equality of justice or favor with which a wise despot must view all his subjects who do not attack the foundations of his power.  Love of liberty itself may, in such men, become the means of establishing an arbitrary domination.  On the other hand, they who wish for a democratic republic will find a set of men who have no choice between civil servitude and the entire ruin of a mixed Constitution.

Suppose the people of Ireland divided into three parts.  Of these, (I speak within compass,) two are Catholic; of the remaining third, one half is composed of Dissenters.  There is no natural union between those descriptions.  It may be produced.  If the two parts Catholic be driven into a close confederacy with half the third part of Protestants, with a view to a change in the Constitution in Church or State or both, and you rest the whole of their security on a handful of gentlemen, clergy, and their dependents,—­compute the strength you have in Ireland, to oppose to grounded discontent, to capricious innovation, to blind popular fury, and to ambitious, turbulent intrigue.

You mention that the minds of some gentlemen are a good deal heated, and that it is often said, that, rather than submit to such persons, having a share in their franchises, they would throw up their independence, and precipitate an union with Great Britain.  I have heard a discussion concerning such an union amongst all sorts of men ever since I remember anything.  For my own part, I have never been able to bring my mind to anything clear and decisive upon the subject.  There cannot be a more arduous question.  As far as I can form an opinion, it would not be for the mutual advantage of the two kingdoms.  Persons, however, more able than I am think otherwise.  But whatever the merits of this union may be, to make it a menace, it must be shown to be an evil, and an evil more particularly to those who are threatened with it than to those who hold it out as a terror.  I really do not see how this threat of an union can operate, or that the Catholics are more likely to be losers by that measure than the churchmen.

The humors of the people, and of politicians too, are so variable in themselves, and are so much under the occasional influence of some leading men, that it is impossible to know what turn the public mind here would take on such an event.  There is but one thing certain concerning it.  Great divisions and vehement passions would precede this union, both on the measure itself and on its terms; and particularly, this very question of a share in the representation for the Catholics, from whence the project of an union originated, would form a principal part in the discussion; and in the temper in which some gentlemen seem inclined to throw themselves, by a sort of high, indignant passion, into the scheme, those points would not be deliberated with all possible calmness.