house was to be inhabited by a voter, _in addition_ to all the
actual votes by other titles (some of the corporate) which we know do
not require a house or a shed. Can I forget that a person of the very
highest rank, of very large fortune, and of the first class of ability,
brought a bill into the House of Lords, in the head-quarters of
aristocracy, containing identically the same project for the supposed
adoption of which by a club or two it is thought right to extinguish all
hopes in the Roman Catholics of Ireland? I cannot say it was very
eagerly embraced or very warmly pursued. But the Lords neither did
disavow the bill, nor treat it with any disregard, nor express any sort
of disapprobation of its noble author, who has never lost, with king or
people, the least degree of the respect and consideration which so
justly belongs to him.

I am not at all enamored, as I have told you, with this plan of
representation; as little do I relish any bandings or associations for
procuring it. But if the question was to be put to you and
me,--_Universal_ popular representation, or _none at all for us and
ours_,--we should find ourselves in a very awkward position. I do not
like this kind of dilemmas, especially when they are practical.

Then, since our oldest fundamental laws follow, or rather couple,
freehold with franchise,--since no principle of the Revolution shakes
these liberties,--since the oldest and one of the best monuments of the
Constitution demands for the Irish the privilege which they
supplicate,--since the principles of the Revolution coincide with the
declarations of the Great Charter,--since the practice of the
Revolution, in this point, did not contradict its principles,--since,
from that event, twenty-five years had elapsed, before a domineering
party, on a party principle, had ventured to disfranchise, without any
proof whatsoever of abuse, the greater part of the community,--since the
king's coronation oath does not stand in his way to the performance of
his duty to all his subjects,--since you have given to all other
Dissenters these privileges without limit which are hitherto withheld
without any limitation whatsoever from the Catholics,--since no nation
in the world has ever been known to exclude so great a body of men (not
born slaves) from the civil state, and all the benefits of its
Constitution,--the whole question comes before Parliament as a matter
for its prudence. I do not put the thing on a que