As every one knows that a great part of the constitution of the Irish House of Commons was formed about the year 1614 expressly for bringing that House into a state of dependence, and that the new representative was at that time seated and installed by force and violence, nothing can be more impolitic than for those who wish the House to stand on its present basis (as, for one, I most sincerely do) to make it appear to have kept too much the principle of its first institution, and to continue to be as little a virtual as it is an actual representative of the commons.  It is the degeneracy of such an institution, so vicious in its principle, that is to be wished for.  If men have the real benefit of a sympathetic representation, none but those who are heated and intoxicated with theory will look for any other.  This sort of representation, my dear Sir, must wholly depend, not on the force with which it is upheld, but upon the prudence of those who have influence upon it.  Indeed, without some such prudence in the use of authority, I do not know, at least in the present time, how any power can long continue.

If it be true that both parties are carrying things to extremities in different ways, the object which you and I have in common, that is to say, the union and concord of our country on the basis of the actual representation, without risking those evils which any change in the form of our legislature must inevitably bring on, can never be obtained.  On the part of the Catholics (that is to say, of the body of the people of the kingdom) it is a terrible alternative, either to submit to the yoke of declared and insulting enemies, or to seek a remedy in plunging themselves into the horrors and crimes of that Jacobinism which unfortunately is not disagreeable to the principles and inclinations of, I am afraid, the majority of what we call the Protestants of Ireland.  The Protestant part of that kingdom is represented by the government itself to be, by whole counties, in nothing less than open rebellion.  I am sure that it is everywhere teeming with dangerous conspiracy.

I believe it will be found, that, though the principles of the Catholics, and the incessant endeavors of their clergy, have kept them from being generally infected with the systems of this time, yet, whenever their situation brings them nearer into contact with the Jacobin Protestants, they are more or less infected with their doctrines.

It is a matter for melancholy reflection, but I am fully convinced, that many persons in Ireland would be glad that the Catholics should become more and more infected with the Jacobin madness, in order to furnish new arguments for fortifying them in their monopoly.  On any other ground it is impossible to account for the late language of your men in power.  If statesmen, (let me suppose for argument,) upon the most solid political principles, conceive themselves obliged to resist the wishes of the far more numerous,