That the Irish Parliament of King James did in some particulars, though feebly, imitate the rigor which had been used towards the Irish, is true enough.  Blamable enough they were for what they had done, though under the greatest possible provocation.  I shall never praise confiscations or counter-confiscations as long as I live.  When they happen by necessity, I shall think the necessity lamentable and odious:  I shall think that anything done under it ought not to pass into precedent, or to be adopted by choice, or to produce any of those shocking retaliations which never suffer dissensions to subside.  Least of all would I fix the transitory spirit of civil fury by perpetuating and methodizing it in tyrannic government.  If it were permitted to argue with power, might one not ask these gentlemen whether it would not be more natural, instead of wantonly mooting these questions concerning their property, as if it were an exercise in law, to found it on the solid rock of prescription,—­the soundest, the most general, and the most recognized title between man and man that is known in municipal or in public jurisprudence?—­a title in which not arbitrary institutions, but the eternal order of things, gives judgment; a title which is not the creature, but the master, of positive law; a title which, though not fixed in its term, is rooted in its principle in the law of Nature itself, and is indeed the original ground of all known property:  for all property in soil will always be traced back to that source, and will rest there.  The miserable natives of Ireland, who ninety-nine in an hundred are tormented with quite other cares, and are bowed down to labor for the bread of the hour, are not, as gentlemen pretend, plodding with antiquaries for titles of centuries ago to the estates of the great lords and squires for whom they labor.  But if they were thinking of the titles which gentlemen labor to beat into their heads, where can they bottom their own claims, but in a presumption and a proof that these lands had at some time been possessed by their ancestors?  These gentlemen (for they have lawyers amongst them) know as well as I that in England we have had always a prescription or limitation, as all nations have, against each other.  The crown was excepted; but that exception is destroyed, and we have lately established a sixty years’ possession as against the crown.  All titles terminate in prescription,—­in which (differently from Time in the fabulous instances) the son devours the father, and the last prescription eats up all the former.

* * * * *

A

LETTER

ON

THE AFFAIRS OF IRELAND.

1797.

Dear Sir,—­In the reduced state of body and in the dejected state of mind in which I find myself at this very advanced period of my life, it is a great consolation to me to know that a cause I ever have had so very near my heart is taken up by a man of your activity and talents.