ing but a decided resolution to stand or
fall with their country could have dictated such an address, the direct
tendency of which was to cut off all retreat, and to render them
peculiarly obnoxious to an invader of their own communion. The address
showed what I long languished to see, that all the subjects of England
had cast off all foreign views and connections, and that every man
looked for his relief from every grievance at the hands only of his own
natural government.

It was necessary, on our part, that the natural government should show
itself worthy of that name. It was necessary, at the crisis I speak of,
that the supreme power of the state should meet the conciliatory
dispositions of the subject. To delay protection would be to reject
allegiance. And why should it be rejected, or even coldly and
suspiciously received? If any independent Catholic state should choose
to take part with this kingdom in a war with France and Spain, that
bigot (if such a bigot could be found) would be heard with little
respect, who could dream of objecting his religion to an ally whom the
nation would not only receive with its freest thanks, but purchase with
the last remains of its exhausted treasure. To such an ally we should
not dare to whisper a single syllable of those base and invidious topics
upon which some unhappy men would persuade the state to reject the duty
and allegiance of its own members. Is it, then, because foreigners are
in a condition to set our malice at defiance, that with _them_ we are
willing to contract engagements of friendship, and to keep them with
fidelity and honor, but that, because we conceive some descriptions of
our countrymen are not powerful enough to punish our malignity, we will
not permit them to support our common interest? Is it on that ground
that our anger is to be kindled by their offered kindness? Is it on that
ground that they are to be subjected to penalties, because they are
willing by actual merit to purge themselves from imputed crimes? Lest by
an adherence to the cause of their country they should acquire a title
to fair and equitable treatment, are we resolved to furnish them with
causes of eternal enmity, and rather supply them with just and founded
motives to disaffection than not to have that disaffection in existence
to justify an oppression which, not from policy, but disposition, we
have predetermined to exercise?

What shadow of reason could be assigned, why, at a time whe