refore suffered a multitude of uniform precedents
to be established against it, acted, in my opinion, with the greatest
temperance and wisdom. She saw that the disposition of the _leading
part_ of the nation would not permit them to act any longer the part of
a _garrison_. She saw that true policy did not require that they ever
should have appeared in that character; or if it had done so formerly,
the reasons had now ceased to operate. She saw that the Irish of her
race were resolved to build their Constitution and their politics upon
another bottom. With those things under her view, she instantly complied
with the whole of your demands, without any reservation whatsoever. She
surrendered that boundless superiority, for the preservation of which,
and the acquisition, she had supported the English colonies in Ireland
for so long a time, and at so vast an expense (according to the standard
of those ages) of her blood and treasure.

When we bring before us the matter which history affords for our
selection, it is not improper to examine the spirit of the several
precedents which are candidates for our choice. Might it not be as well
for your statesmen, on the other side of the water, to take an example
from this latter and surely more conciliatory revolution, as a pattern
for your conduct towards your own fellow-citizens, than from that of
1688, when a paramount sovereignty over both you and them was more
loftily claimed and more sternly exerted than at any former or at any
subsequent period? Great Britain in 1782 rose above the vulgar ideas of
policy, the ordinary jealousies of state, and all the sentiments of
national pride and national ambition. If she had been more disposed
(than, I thank God for it, she was) to listen to the suggestions of
passion than to the dictates of prudence, she might have urged the
principles, the maxims, the policy, the practice of the Revolution,
against the demands of the leading description in Ireland, with full as
much plausibility and full as good a grace as any amongst them can
possibly do against the supplications of so vast and extensive a
description of their own people.

A good deal, too, if the spirit of domination and exclusion had
prevailed in England, might have been excepted against some of the means
then employed in Ireland, whilst her claims were in agitation. They
were at least as much out of ordinary course as those which are now
objected against admitting your people to an