is he to escape this ricochet cross-firing of so many opposite batteries of police and regulation?  If he attempts to comply, he is likely to be more a citizen of the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea than of any of these countries.  The matter is absurd and ridiculous, and, while ever the idea of mutual marriages, inheritances, purchases, and privileges subsist, can never be carried into execution with common sense or common justice.

I do not know how gentlemen of Ireland reconcile such an idea to their own liberties, or to the natural use and enjoyment of their estates.  If any of their children should be left in a minority, and a guardian should think, as many do, (it matters not whether properly or no,) that his ward had better he educated in a school or university here than in Ireland, is he sure that he can justify the bringing a tax of ten per cent, perhaps twenty, on his pupil’s estate, by giving what in his opinion is the best education in general, or the best for that pupil’s particular character and circumstances?  Can he justify his sending him to travel, a necessary part of the higher style of education, and, notwithstanding what some narrow writers have said, of great benefit to all countries, but very particularly so to Ireland?  Suppose a guardian, under the authority or pretence of such a tax of police, had prevented our dear friend, Lord Charlemont, from going abroad, would he have lost no satisfaction? would his friends have lost nothing in the companion? would his country have lost nothing in the cultivated taste with which he has adorned it in so many ways?  His natural elegance of mind would undoubtedly do a great deal; but I will venture to assert, without the danger of being contradicted, that he adorns his present residence in Ireland much the more for having resided a long time out of it.  Will Mr. Flood himself think he ought to have been driven by taxes into Ireland, whilst he prepared himself by an English education to understand and to defend the rights of the subject in Ireland, or to support the dignity of government there, according as his opinions, or the situation of things, may lead him to take either part, upon respectable principles?  I hope it is not forgot that an Irish act of Parliament sends its youth to England for the study of the law, and compels a residence in the inns of court hero for some years.  Will you send out with one breath and recall with another?  This act plainly provides for that intercourse which supposes the strictest union in laws and policy, in both which the intended tax supposes an entire separation.

It would be endless to go into all the inconveniences this tax will lead to, in the conduct of private life, and the use of property.  How many infirm people are obliged to change their climate, whose life depends upon that change!  How many families straitened in their circumstances are there, who, from the shame, sometimes from the utter impossibility otherwise of retrenching, are obliged to remove from their country, in order to preserve their estates in their families!  You begin, then, to burden these people precisely at the time when their circumstances of health and fortune render them rather objects of relief and commiseration.