the leading men in those parties, I cannot hesitate to lay before you my opinion, that, whilst any kind of discouragements and disqualifications remain on the Catholics, an handle will be made by a factious power utterly to defeat the benefits of any civil rights they may apparently possess.  I need not go to very remote times for my examples.  It was within the course of about a twelvemonth, that, after Parliament had been led into a step quite unparalleled in its records, after they had resisted all concession, and even hearing, with an obstinacy equal to anything that could have actuated a party domination in the second or eighth of Queen Anne, after the strange adventure of the Grand Juries, and after Parliament had listened to the sovereign pleading for the emancipation of his subjects,—­it was after all this, that such a grudging and discontent was expressed as must justly have alarmed, as it did extremely alarm, the whole of the Catholic body:  and I remember but one period in my whole life (I mean the savage period between 1781 and 1767) in which they have been more harshly or contumeliously treated than since the last partial enlargement.  And thus I am convinced it will be, by paroxysms, as long as any stigma remains on them, and whilst they are considered as no better than half citizens.  If they are kept such for any length of time, they will be made whole Jacobins.  Against this grand and dreadful evil of our time (I do not love to cheat myself or others) I do not know any solid security whatsoever; but I am quite certain that what will come nearest to it is to interest as many as you can in the present order of things, religiously, civilly, politically, by all the ties and principles by which mankind are held.  This is like to be effectual policy:  I am sure it is honorable policy:  and it is better to fail, if fail we must, in the paths of direct and manly than of low and crooked wisdom.

As to the capacity of sitting in Parliament, after all the capacities for voting, for the army, for the navy, for the professions, for civil offices, it is a dispute de lana caprina, in my poor opinion,—­at least on the part of those who oppose it.  In the first place, this admission to office, and this exclusion from Parliament, on the principle of an exclusion from political power, is the very reverse of the principle of the English Test Act.  If I were to form a judgment from experience rather than theory, I should doubt much whether the capacity for or even the possession of a seat in Parliament did really convey much of power to be properly called political.  I have sat there, with some observation, for nine-and-twenty years, or thereabouts.  The power of a member of Parliament is uncertain and indirect; and if power, rather than splendor and fame, were the object, I should think that any of the principal clerks in office, to say nothing of their superiors, (several of whom are disqualified by law for seats in Parliament,) possess far more power than nine tenths of the members