and, as things stand, not the worse part of the community, one would think they would naturally put their refusal as much as possible upon temporary grounds, and that they would act towards them in the most conciliatory manner, and would talk to them in the most gentle and soothing language:  for refusal, in itself, is not a very gracious thing; and, unfortunately, men are very quickly irritated out of their principles.  Nothing is more discouraging to the loyalty of any description of men than to represent to them that their humiliation and subjection make a principal part in the fundamental and invariable policy which regards the conjunction of these two kingdoms.  This is not the way to give them a warm interest in that conjunction.

My poor opinion is, that the closest connection between Great Britain and Ireland is essential to the well-being, I had almost said, to the very being, of the two kingdoms.  For that purpose I humbly conceive that the whole of the superior, and what I should call imperial politics, ought to have its residence here; and that Ireland, locally, civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look up to Great Britain in all matters of peace or of war,—­in all those points to be guided by her.—­and, in a word, with her to live and to die.  At bottom, Ireland has no other choice,—­I mean, no other rational choice.

I think, indeed, that Great Britain would be ruined by the separation of Ireland; but as there are degrees even in ruin, it would fall the most heavily on Ireland.  By such a separation Ireland would be the most completely undone country in the world,—­the most wretched, the most distracted, and, in the end, the most desolate part of the habitable globe.  Little do many people in Ireland consider how much of its prosperity has been owing to, and still depends upon, its intimate connection with this kingdom.  But, more sensible of this great truth, than perhaps any other man, I have never conceived, or can conceive, that the connection is strengthened by making the major part of the inhabitants of your country believe that their ease, and their satisfaction, and their equalization with the rest of their fellow-subjects of Ireland are things adverse to the principles of that connection,—­or that their subjection to a small monopolizing junto, composed of one of the smallest of their own internal factions, is the very condition upon which the harmony of the two kingdoms essentially depends.  I was sorry to hear that this principle, or something not unlike it, was publicly and fully avowed by persons of great rank and authority in the House of Lords in Ireland.