As to a participation on the part of the Catholics in the privileges and capacities which are withheld, without meaning wholly to depreciate their importance, if I had the honor of being an Irish Catholic, I should be content to expect satisfaction upon that subject with patience, until the minds of my adversaries, few, but powerful, were come to a proper temper:  because, if the Catholics did enjoy, without fraud, chicane, or partiality, some fair portion of those advantages which the law, even as now the law is, leaves open to them, and if the rod were not shaken over them at every turn, their present condition would be tolerable; as compared with their former condition, it would be happy.  But the most favorable laws can do very little towards the happiness of a people, when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.  Men do not live upon blotted paper.  The favorable or the hostile mind of the ruling power is of far more importance to mankind, for good or evil, than the black-letter of any statute.  Late acts of Parliament, whilst they fixed at least a temporary bar to the hopes and progress of the larger description of the nation, opened to them certain subordinate objects of equality; but it is impossible that the people should imagine that any fair measure of advantage is intended to them, when they hear the laws by which they were admitted to this limited qualification publicly reprobated as excessive and inconsiderate.  They must think that there is a hankering after the old penal and persecuting code.  Their alarm must be great, when that declaration is made by a person in very high and important office in the House of Commons, and as the very first specimen and auspice of a new government.

All this is very unfortunate.  I have the honor of an old acquaintance, and entertain, in common with you, a very high esteem for the few English persons who are concerned in the government of Ireland; but I am not ignorant of the relation these transitory ministers bear to the more settled Irish part of your administration.  It is a delicate topic, upon which I wish to say but little, though my reflections upon it are many and serious.  There is a great cry against English influence.  I am quite sure that it is Irish influence that dreads the English habits.

Great disorders have long prevailed in Ireland.  It is not long since that the Catholics were the suffering party from those disorders.  I am sure they were not protected as the case required.  Their sufferings became a matter of discussion in Parliament.  It produced the most infuriated declamation against them that I have ever read.  An inquiry was moved into the facts.  The declamation was at least tolerated, if not approved.  The inquiry was absolutely rejected.  In that case, what is left for those who are abandoned by government, but to join with the persons who are capable of injuring them or protecting them as they oppose or concur in their designs?  This will produce a very fatal kind of union amongst the people; but it is an union, which an unequal administration of justice tends necessarily to produce.