black and sullen discontent in those who are at once dispossessed of all their influence and consideration.  This gradual course, on the other side, will prevent men long under depression from being intoxicated with a large draught of new power, which they always abuse with a licentious insolence.  But, wishing, as I do, the change to be gradual and cautious, I would, in my first steps, lean rather to the side of enlargement than restriction.

It is one excellence of our Constitution, that all our rights of provincial election regard rather property than person.  It is another, that the rights which approach more nearly to the personal are most of them corporate, and suppose a restrained and strict education of seven years in some useful occupation.  In both cases the practice may have slid from the principle.  The standard of qualification in both cases may be so low, or not so judiciously chosen, as in some degree to frustrate the end.  But all this is for your prudence in the case before you.  You may rise a step or two the qualification of the Catholic voters.  But if you were to-morrow to put the Catholic freeholder on the footing of the most favored forty-shilling Protestant Dissenter, you know, that, such is the actual state of Ireland, this would not make a sensible alteration in almost any one election in the kingdom.  The effect in their favor, even defensively, would be infinitely slow.  But it would be healing; it would be satisfactory and protecting.  The stigma would be removed.  By admitting settled, permanent substance in lieu of the numbers, you would avoid the great danger of our time, that of setting up number against property.  The numbers ought never to be neglected, because (besides what is due to them as men) collectively, though not individually, they have great property:  they ought to have, therefore, protection; they ought to have security; they ought to have even consideration:  but they ought not to predominate.

My dear Sir, I have nearly done.  I meant to write you a long letter:  I have written a long dissertation.  I might have done it earlier and better.  I might have been more forcible and more clear, if I had not been interrupted as I have been; and this obliges me not to write to you in my own hand.  Though my hand but signs it, my heart goes with what I have written.  Since I could think at all, those have been my thoughts.  You know that thirty-two years ago they were as fully matured in my mind as they are now.  A letter of mine to Lord Kenmare, though not by my desire, and full of lesser mistakes, has been printed in Dublin.  It was written ten or twelve years ago, at the time when I began the employment, which I have not yet finished, in favor of another distressed people, injured by those who have vanquished them, or stolen a dominion over them.  It contained my sentiments then:  you will see how far they accord with my sentiments now.  Time has more and more confirmed me in them all.  The present circumstances fix them deeper in my mind.