one
period in my whole life (I mean the savage period between 1781 and 1767)
in which they have been more harshly or contumeliously treated than
since the last partial enlargement. And thus I am convinced it will be,
by paroxysms, as long as any stigma remains on them, and whilst they are
considered as no better than half citizens. If they are kept such for
any length of time, they will be made whole Jacobins. Against this grand
and dreadful evil of our time (I do not love to cheat myself or others)
I do not know any solid security whatsoever; but I am quite certain that
what will come nearest to it is to interest as many as you can in the
present order of things, religiously, civilly, politically, by all the
ties and principles by which mankind are held. This is like to be
effectual policy: I am sure it is honorable policy: and it is better to
fail, if fail we must, in the paths of direct and manly than of low and
crooked wisdom.

As to the capacity of sitting in Parliament, after all the capacities
for voting, for the army, for the navy, for the professions, for civil
offices, it is a dispute _de lana caprina_, in my poor opinion,--at
least on the part of those who oppose it. In the first place, this
admission to office, and this exclusion from Parliament, on the
principle of an exclusion from political power, is the very reverse of
the principle of the English Test Act. If I were to form a judgment from
experience rather than theory, I should doubt much whether the capacity
for or even the possession of a seat in Parliament did really convey
much of power to be properly called political. I have sat there, with
some observation, for nine-and-twenty years, or thereabouts. The power
of a member of Parliament is uncertain and indirect; and if power,
rather than splendor and fame, were the object, I should think that any
of the principal clerks in office, to say nothing of their superiors,
(several of whom are disqualified by law for seats in Parliament,)
possess far more power than nine tenths of the members of the House of
Commons. I might say this of men who seemed, from their fortunes, their
weight in their country, and their talents, to be persons of figure
there,--and persons, too, not in opposition to the prevailing party in
government. But be they what they will, on a fair canvass of the several
prevalent Parliamentary interests in Ireland, I cannot, out of the three
hundred members of whom the Irish Parliament is