I humbly lay these my sentiments before the county.  They are not taken up to serve any interests of my own, or to be subservient to the interests of any man or set of men under heaven.  I could wish to be able to attend our meeting, or that I had time to reason this matter more fully by letter; but I am detained here upon our business:  what you have already put upon us is as much as we can do.  If we are prevented from going through it with any effect, I fear it will be in part owing not more to the resistance of the enemies of our cause than to our imposing on ourselves such tasks as no human faculties, employed as we are, can be equal to.  Our worthy members have shown distinguished ability and zeal in support of our petition.  I am just going down to a bill brought in to frustrate a capital part of your desires.  The minister is preparing to transfer the cognizance of the public accounts from those whom you and the Constitution have chosen to control them, to unknown persons, creatures of his own.  For so much he annihilates Parliament.

I have the honor, &c.

EDMUND BURKE.

CHARLES STREET, 12th April, 1780.

FRAGMENTS OF A TRACT

RELATIVE TO

THE LAWS AGAINST POPERY

IN IRELAND.

NOTE.

The condition of the Roman Catholics in Ireland appears to lave engaged the attention of Mr. Burke at a very early period of his political life.  It was probably soon after the year 1765 that he formed the plan of a work upon that subject, the fragments of which are now given to the public.  No title is prefixed to it in the original manuscript; and the Plan, which it has been thought proper to insert here, was evidently designed merely for the convenience of the author.  Of the first chapter some unconnected fragments only, too imperfect for publication, have been found.  Of the second there is a considerable portion, perhaps nearly the whole; but the copy from which it is printed is evidently a first rough draught.  The third chapter, as far as it goes, is taken from a fair, corrected copy; but the end of the second part of the first head is left unfinished, and the discussion of the second and third heads was either never entered upon or the manuscript containing it has unfortunately been lost.  What follows the third chapter appears to have been designed for the beginning of the fourth, and is evidently the first rough draught; and to this we have added a fragment which appears to have been a part either of this or the first chapter.

In the volume with which it is intended to close this posthumous publication of Mr. Burke’s Works, we shall have occasion to enter into a more particular account of the part which he took in the discussion of this great political question.