any property amongst
them, of all sort of influence or authority over the rest. They divided
the nation into two distinct bodies, without common interest, sympathy,
or connection. One of these bodies was to possess _all_ the franchises,
_all_ the property, _all_ the education: the other was to be composed of
drawers of water and cutters of turf for them. Are we to be astonished,
when, by the efforts of so much violence in conquest, and so much policy
in regulation, continued without intermission for near an hundred years,
we had reduced them to a mob, that, whenever they came to act at all,
many of them would act exactly like a mob, without temper, measure, or
foresight? Surely it might be just now a matter of temperate discussion,
whether you ought not to apply a remedy to the real cause of the evil.
If the disorder you speak of be real and considerable, you ought to
raise an aristocratic interest, that is, an interest of property and
education, amongst them,--and to strengthen, by every prudent means, the
authority and influence of men of that description. It will deserve your
best thoughts, to examine whether this can be done without giving such
persons the means of demonstrating to the rest that something more is to
be got by their temperate conduct than can be expected from the wild and
senseless projects of those who do not belong to their body, who have no
interest in their well-being, and only wish to make them the dupes of
their turbulent ambition.

If the absurd persons you mention find no way of providing for liberty,
but by overturning this happy Constitution, and introducing a frantic
democracy, let us take care how we prevent better people from any
rational expectations of partaking in the benefits of that Constitution
_as it stands_. The maxims you establish cut the matter short. They have
no sort of connection with the good or the ill behavior of the persons
who seek relief, or with the proper or improper means by which they seek
it. They form a perpetual bar to all pleas and to all expectations.

You begin by asserting, that "the Catholics ought to enjoy all things
_under_ the state, but that they ought not to _be the state_": a
position which, I believe, in the latter part of it, and in the latitude
there expressed, no man of common sense has ever thought proper to
dispute; because the contrary implies that the state ought to be in them
_exclusively_. But before you have finished the line, you express