lameness, though it cannot enable him either to run or to wrestle.

You see by the paper[28] I take that I am likely to be long, with malice
prepense. You have brought under my view a subject always difficult, at
present critical. It has filled my thoughts, which I wish to lay open to
you with the clearness and simplicity which your friendship demands from
me. I thank you for the communication of your ideas. I should be still
more pleased, if they had been more your own. What you hint I believe to
be the case: that, if you had not deferred to the judgment of others,
our opinions would not differ more materially at this day than they did
when we used to confer on the same subject so many years ago. If I still
persevere in my old opinions, it is no small comfort to me that it is
not with regard to doctrines properly yours that I discover my
indocility.

The case upon which your letter of the 10th of December turns is hardly
before me with precision enough to enable me to form any very certain
judgment upon it. It seems to be some plan of further indulgence
proposed for the Catholics of Ireland. You observe, that your "general
principles are not changed, but that _times and circumstances are
altered_." I perfectly agree with you, that times and circumstances,
considered with reference to the public, ought very much to govern our
conduct,--though I am far from slighting, when applied with discretion
to those circumstances, general principles and maxims of policy. I
cannot help observing, however, that you have said rather less upon the
inapplicability of your own old principles to the _circumstances_ that
are likely to influence your conduct against these principles than of
the _general_ maxims of state, which I can very readily believe not to
have great weight with you personally.

In my present state of imperfect information, you will pardon the
errors into which I may easily fall. The principles you lay down are,
"that the Roman Catholics should enjoy everything _under_ the state, but
should not be _the state itself_." And you add, "that, when you exclude
them from being _a part of the state_, you rather conform to the spirit
of the age than to any abstract doctrine"; but you consider the
Constitution as already established,--that our state is Protestant. "It
was declared so at the Revolution. It was so provided in the acts for
settling the succession of the crown:--the king's coronation oath was
enjoined in order to