To this influence the principle of action, the principle of policy, and the principle of union of the present minority are opposed.  These principles of the opposition are the only thing which preserves a single symptom of life in the nation.  That opposition is composed of the far greater part of the independent property and independent rank of the kingdom, of whatever is most untainted in character, and of whatever ability remains unextinguished in the people, and of all which tends to draw the attention of foreign countries upon this.  It is now in its final and conclusive struggle.  It has to struggle against a force to which, I am afraid, it is not equal.  The whole kingdom of Scotland ranges with the venal, the unprincipled, and the wrong-principled of this; and if the kingdom of Ireland thinks proper to pass into the same camp, we shall certainly be obliged to quit the field.  In that case, if I know anything of this country, another constitutional opposition can never be formed in it; and if this be impossible, it will be at least as much so (if there can be degrees in impossibility) to have a constitutional administration at any future time.  The possibility of the former is the only security for the existence of the latter.  Whether the present administration be in the least like one, I must venture to doubt, even in the honey-moon of the Irish fondness to Lord North, which has succeeded to all their slappings and scratchings.

If liberty cannot maintain its ground in this kingdom, I am sure that it cannot have any long continuance in yours.  Our liberty might now and then jar and strike a discord with that of Ireland.  The thing is possible:  but still the instruments might play in concert.  But if ours be unstrung, yours will be hung up on a peg, and both will be mute forever.  Your new military force may give you confidence, and it serves well for a turn; but you and I know that it has not root.  It is not perennial, and would prove but a poor shelter for your liberty, when this nation, having no interest in its own, could look upon yours with the eye of envy and disgust.  I cannot, therefore, help thinking, and telling you what with great submission I think, that, if the Parliament of Ireland be so jealous of the spirit of our common Constitution as she seems to be, it was not so discreet to mix with the panegyric on the minister so large a portion of acrimony to the independent part of this nation.  You never received any sort of injury from them, and you are grown to that degree of importance that the discourses in your Parliament will have a much greater effect on our immediate fortune than our conversation can have upon yours.  In the end they will seriously, affect both.