Your speech on the Catholic question I read with much satisfaction.  It is solid; it is convincing; it is eloquent; and it ought, on the spot, to have produced that effect which its reason, and that contained in the other excellent speeches on the same side of the question, cannot possibly fail (though with less pleasant consequences) to produce hereafter.  What a sad thing it is, that the grand instructor, Time, has not yet been able to teach the grand lesson of his own value, and that, in every question of moral and political prudence, it is the choice of the moment which renders the measure serviceable or useless, noxious or salutary!

In the Catholic question I considered only one point:  Was it, at the time, and in the circumstances, a measure which tended to promote the concord of the citizens?  I have no difficulty in saying it was,—­and as little in saying that the present concord of the citizens was worth buying, at a critical season, by granting a few capacities, which probably no one man now living is likely to be served or hurt by.  When any man tells you and me, that, if these places were left in the discretion of a Protestant crown, and these memberships in the discretion of Protestant electors or patrons, we should have a Popish official system, and a Popish representation, capable of overturning the Establishment, he only insults our understandings.  When any man tells this to Catholics, he insults their understandings, and he galls their feelings.  It is not the question of the places and seats, it is the real hostile disposition and the pretended fears, that leave stings in the minds of the people.  I really thought that in the total of the late circumstances, with regard to persons, to things, to principles, and to measures, was to be found a conjuncture favorable to the introduction and to the perpetuation of a general harmony, producing a general strength, which to that hour Ireland was never so happy as to enjoy.  My sanguine hopes are blasted, and I must consign my feelings on that terrible disappointment to the same patience in which I have been obliged to bury the vexation I suffered on the defeat of the other great, just, and honorable causes in which I have had some share, and which have given more of dignity than of peace and advantage to a long, laborious life.  Though, perhaps, a want of success might be urged as a reason for making me doubt of the justice of the part I have taken, yet, until I have other lights than one side of the debate has furnished me, I must see things, and feel them too, as I see and feel them.  I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland,—­or of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia,—­or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe and the state of human society itself.  The last is the greatest evil.  But it readily combines with the others, and flows from them.